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The Way to the West 



The 

Way to the West 

AND THE 

LIVES OF THREE EARLY AMERICANS 

BOONE— CROCKETT— CARSON 

BY 

Emerson Hough 

Author of The Mississippi Bubble 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 

FREDERIC REMINGTON 



INDIANAPOLIS 

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



Copyright, 1903 
The Bobbs-Mebrill Company 



October 



THE LIBRARY OF | 
Two Copies Receiver 

OCT 23 ^903 

Co|>yrign1 tt-.ti/ 
CLASS CI XX V' 

li ^ ^ 






" •,: :\ %; >^: : : ' V: :.: *: 
: •*: "\ ••! »•• ; •: •*• •**. ••: ••- 



PRESS OF 

BRAUNWORTH & CO. 

BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS 

BROOKLYN, N. V. 



TO 

J. B, H. 



Contents 



BOOK I 

THE WAY ACROSS THE ALLEGHANIES 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I THE AMERICAN AX 7 

II THE AMERICAN RIFLE 11 

III THE AMERICAN BOAT 19 

IV THE AMERICAN HORSE 25 

V THE PATHWAY OF THE WATERS 32 
VI THE MISSISSIPPI, AND INDEPENDENCE 58 

VII ORIGIN OF THE PIONEER 73 

VIII DANIEL BOONE 87 

IX A FRONTIER REPUBLIC 122 

BOOK II 

THE WAY TO THE ROCKIES 

I DAVY CROCKETT 143 

II AGAINST THE WATERS 185 

BOOK III 

THE WAY TO THE PACIFIC 

I KIT CARSON 223 

II THE SANTA F^ TRAIL 260 

III THE OREGON TRAIL 287 

IV EARLY EXPLORERS OF THE TRANS-MISSOURI 311 

V ACROSS THE WATERS 343 

BOOK IV 

THE WAY ACROSS THE PACIFIC 

I THE IRON TRAILS 381 

II THE PATHWAYS OF THE FUTURE 413 



1834 



IN THE YEAR 1834 IT BECAME NO LONGER 
PROFITABLE TO TRAP THE BEAVER 



PREFACE 



The customary method in writing history is to 
rely on chronological sequence as the only con- 
necting thread in the narrative. For this reason 
many books of history are but little more than 
loosely bound masses of dates and events that bear 
no philosophical connection with one another, and 
therefore are not easily retained in the grasp of the 
average mind. History, to be of service, must be 
remembered. 

A merely circumstantial mind may grasp and re- 
tain for a time a series of disconnected dates and 
events, but such facts do not appeal to that more 
common yet not less able type of intellect that asks 
not only when, but why, such and such a thing hap- 
pened; that instinctively relates a given event to 
some other event, and thus goes on to a certain 
solidity and permanency in conclusions. Perhaps to 
this latter type of mind there may be appeal in a 
series of loosely connected yet really interlocking 

monographs upon certain phases of the splendid 

1 



2 PREFACE 

and stirring history of the settlement of the Ameri- 
can West. 

N'ot concerned so much with a sequence of dates, 
or with a story of martial or political triumphs, so 
called, the wri1,er has sought to show somewhat of 
the genesis of the Western man; that is to say, the 
American man; for the history of America is but a 
history of the West. 

Whence came tliis Western man, why came he, 
in what fashion, under what limitations? What 
are the reasons for the American or Western type? 
Is that type permanent? Have we actual cause for 
self-congratulation at the present stage of our na- 
tional development ? These are some of the questions 
that present themselves in this series of studies of 
the, manner in which the settlement of the West was 
brought about. 

The history of the occupation of the West is the 
story of a great pilgrimage. It is the record of a 
people always outstripping its leaders in wisdom, in 
energy and in foresight. A slave of politics, the 
American citizen has none the less always proved 
himself greater than politics or politicians. The 
American, the Westerner, if you please, has been a 
splendid individual. We shall have no hope as a 
nation when the day of the individual shall be no 
more. Then ultimately we shall demand Magna 



PREFACE 3 

Cliarta over again; shall repeat in parallel the his- 
tory of France in '93; shall perhaps see the streets 
run red in our America. There are those who be- 
lieve that the day of the individual in America is 
passing all too swiftly, that we are making history 
over-fast. There is scant space for speculation 
when the facts come crowding down so rapidly on 
us as is the case to-day. Yet there may perhaps be 
6ome interest attached to conclusions herein, which 
appear logical as based upon a study of the manner 
in which the American country was settled. 

As to dates, we shall need but few. Indeed, it 
will suffice if the reader shall remember but one date 
out of all given in this book — that when it became 
no longer profitable to trap the beaver in the West. 
This date, remembered and understood logically, may 
prove of considerable service in the study of the 
movements of the American people. 

As to the apparently disconnected nature of the 
studies here presented, it is matter, as one may again 
indicate, not of accident. On the contrary, the 
arrangement of the material is thought to consti- 
tute the chief claim of the work for a tolerant con- 
sideration. 

I shall ask my reader to consider the movements 
of the American population as grouped under four 
great epochs. There was a time when the west- 



4 PREFACE 

bound men were crossing the Alleghanies ; a time 
when they crossed the Mississippi ; a time when they 
crossed the Rocky Mountains. Now they cross the 
Pacific Ocean. Roughly coincident with these great 
epochs we may consider, first, the period of down- 
stream transportation; second, of up-stream trans- 
portation; and lastly, of transportation not parallel 
to the great watercourses, hut directly across them 
on the way to the West. These latter groupings were 
employed in a series of articles printed in the Cen- 
tury Magazine in the year 1901-1902, the use of this 
material herein being by courtesy of the Century 
Company. 

I have not hesitated to employ the medium of 
biography where that seemed the best vehicle for con- 
veying the idea of a great and daring people led by 
a few great ancj daring pilots, prophets of adventur- 
ings: hence the sketches of the lives of the great 
frontiersmen, Boone, Crockett, and Carson, — ^all 
great and significant lives, whose story is useful in 
illustrative quality. 

I am indebted for many facts obtained from spe- 
cial study by Mr. Horace Kephart, an authority on 
early Western history, illustrating thoroughly 
the part that the state of Pennsylvania played 
in the movement of the early west-bound pop- 
ulation. Mr. Warren S. Ely, a resident of his- 



PREFACE 5 

toric Bucks County, Pennsylvania, supplements Mr. 
Kepliart's material with results of local investigations 
of Ms own. Mr. Alexander Hynds of Tennessee as- 
sists in telling the story of that Frontier Eepublic 
whose history blends itself so closely with Western 
affairs of a hundred years ago. I have quoted freely 
from Mr. N. P. Langford, a man of the early trans- 
Missouri, an Argonaut of the Rockies, who has placed 
at my disposal much valuable material. Mr. Hiram 
M. Chittenden's splendid work on the history of the 
American fur trade has proved of great value. 

I am indebted to many books and periodicals for 
data regarding the modem American industrial de- 
velopment. I am indebted also to many early authors 
who wrote of the old West, and am under obliga- 
tions to very many unknown friends, the unnamed 
but able writers of the daily press. 

In regard to the classification of this material, 
varied and apparently heterogeneous, yet really in- 
terdependent, under the four epochs or volume-heads 
mentioned, I refer to the table given on another page. 

As justification of what might be called presump- 
tion on the part of the writer in undertaking a work 
of this nature, he has only to plead a sincere interest 
in the West, which was his own native land; a love 
for that free American life now all too rapidly fading 
away; and a deep admiration for the accomplish' 



is PREFACE 

ments of that American civilization whicli never was 
and never will be any better than the man that made 
it. It has not been the intention herein to write a 
history of the American people, but a history of the 
American man. 

EMERSON HOUGH. 
Chicago, Illinois, June, 1903. 



THE WAY TO THE WEST 



CHAPTER I 

THE AMERICAN AX 

I ask you to look at this splendid tool, the Ameri- 
can ax, not more an implement of labor than an 
instrument of civilization. If you can not use it, 
you are not American. If you do not understand it, 
you can not understand America. 

This tool is so simple and so perfect that it has 
scarcely seen change in the course of a hundred years. 
It lacks decoration, as do the tools and the weapons 
of all strong peoples. It has no fantastic lines, no 
deviations from simplicity of outline, no ornamenta- 
tions, no irregularities. It is simple, severe, perfect. 
Its beauty is the beauty of utility. 

In the shaft of the ax there is a curve. This 
curve is there for a reason, a reason of usefulness. 
The simple swelling head is made thus not for mo- 
tives of beauty, but for the purpose of effectiveness. 
The shaft, an even yard in length, polished, curved, 



8 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

of a formation that shall give the greatest strength 
to a downright hlow in combination with the greatest 
security to the hand-grasp^, has been made thus for a 
century of American life. This shaft is made of 
idckory, the sternest of American woods, the one 
most capable of withstanding the hardest use. It 
has always been made thus and of this material. 

The metal head or blade of the American ax is 
to-day as it has always been. The makers of axes 
will tell you that they scarcely know of any other 
model. The face of the blade is of the most highly 
tempered steel for a third or half of its extent. 
The blade or bitt is about eight inches in length, 
the cutting edge four and seven-eighths to five inches 
in width. The curve of this edge could not, by the 
highest science, be made more perfect for the pur- 
pose of biting deepest at the least outlay of human 
strength. The poll or back of the ax is about four 
inches in width, square or roughly rounded into 
such form that it is capable of delivering a pound- 
ing, crushing or directing blow. The weight of the 
ax-head is about four pounds, that is to say from 
three and one-half to five pounds. 

With the ax one can do many things. With it 
the early American blazed his way through the track- 
less forests. With it he felled the wood whereby 
was fed the home fire, or the blaze by which he kept 



THE AMERICAN AX 

his distant and solitary bivouac. With it he buil!. 
his home, framing a fortress capable of withstand- 
ing all the weaponry of his time. With it he not 
only made the walls, but fabricated the floors and 
roof for his little castle. He built chairs, tables, 
beds, therewith. By its means he hewed out his 
homestead from the heart of the primeval forest, 
and fenced it round about. Without it he had been 
lost. 

At times it served him not only as tool, but as 
weapon; nor did more terrible weapon ever fit the 
hand of man. Against its downright blow wielded 
by a sinewy arm the steel casques of the Crusaders 
had proved indeed poor fending. Even the early 
womankind of America had acquaintance with this 
weapon. There is record of a woman of early Ken- 
tucky who with an ax once despatched five Indians, 
who assailed the cabin where for the time she had 
been left alone. 

It was a tremendous thing, this ax of the early 
American. It cleared away paths over hundreds of 
miles, or marked the portages between the heads of 
the Western waterways, which the early government 
declared should be held as public pathways forever. 
In time it became an agent of desolation and destruc- 
tion, as well as an agent of upbuilding and construc- 
tion. Misguided, it leveled all too soon and waste- 



10 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

fully tlie magnificent forests of this country, whose 
superior was never seen on any portion of the 
earth. Stern, simple, severe, tremendous, wasteful 
— truly this was the typical American implement. 



CHAPTER II 

THE AMERICAN RIFLE 

Witness this sweet ancient weapon of our fathers, 
the American rifle, maker of states, empire builder. 
Useful as its cousin, the ax, it is in design simple as 
the ax; in outline severe, practicable, purposeful in 
every regard. It is devoid of ornamentation. The 
brass that binds the foot of the stock is there to 
protect the wood. The metal guard below the lock 
is to preserve from injury the light set-triggers. 
The serrated edges of the lock plate may show rude 
file marks of a certain pattern, but they are done 
more in careless strength than in cunning or in deli- 
cacy. This is no belonging of a weak or savage man. 
It is the weapon of the Anglo-Saxon; that is to say, 
the Anglo-Saxon in America, who invented it be- 
cause he had need for it. 

This arm was born of the conditions that surround- 
ed our forefathers in the densely covered slopes of 
the Appalachian Divide, in whose virgin forests 
there was for the most part small opportunity for 
extended vision, hence little necessity for a weapon 

of long range. The game or the enemy with which 

11 



12 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

the early frontiersman was concerned was apt to be 
met at distances of not more than a hundred or two 
hundred yards, and the early rifle was perfect for 
such ranges. 

Moreover, it was only with great difficulty that the 
frontiersman transported any weighty articles on 
his Western pilgrimage. Lead was heavy, powder 
was precious, the paths back to the land of such 
commodities long and arduous. A marvel of adapta- 
tion, the American rifle swiftly grew to a practical 
perfection. Never in the history of the arms of na- 
tions has there been produced a weapon whose results 
have been more tremendous in comparison to the 
visible expenditure of energy; never has there been 
a more economical engine, or an environment where 
economy was more imperative. 

The ball of the American rifle was small, forty, 
sixty or perhaps one hundred of them weighing 
scarcely more than a pound. The little, curving horn, 
filled with the precious powder grains, carried enough 
to furnish many shots. The stock of the rifle itself 
gave housing to the little squares of linen or fine 
leather with which the bullet was patched in load- 
ing. With this tiny store of powder and lead, easily 
portable food for this providentially contrived 
weapon, the American frontiersman passed on si- 
lently through the forest, a master, an arbiter, ruler 



THE AMERICAN RIFLE 13 

of savage beast or savage foeman, and in time master 
of the civilized antagonist that said him nay. 

We shall observe that the state of Pennsylvania 
was the starting point of the westward movement 
of our frontiersmen. We shall find also that the first 
American small-bore, muzzle-loading rifles were 
made in Pennsylvania. The principle of the rifle, 
the twist in the bore, is thought to have originated 
in the German states of the Palatinate, but it was 
left for America to improve it and to perfect its use. 

At Lancaster, Pennsylvania, there was a rifleinaker, 
probably a German by birth, by name Decherd or 
Dechert, who began to outline the type of the Ameri- 
can squirrel-rifle or hunting-arm. This man had 
an apprentice, one Mills, with ideas of his own. 
We see this apprentice and his improved rifle 
presently in North Carolina; and soon thereafter 
riflemakers spring up all over the east slope of the 
Alleghanies, so that as though by magic all our 
hunters and frontiersmen are equipped with tliis 
long rifle, shooting the tiny ball, and shooting it 
with an accuracy hitherto deemed impossible in the 
achievements of firearms. 

Withal we may call this a Southern arm, since New 
England was later in taking up its use, clinging to 
the Queen Anne musket when the men of North Car- 
olina and Virginia scorned to shoot a squirrel any- 



14 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

where except in the head. The first riflemen of the 
Eevolutionary War were Pennsylvanians, Virgirdans 
and Marylanders, all Southerners; and deadly 
enough was' their skill with what the English officers 
called their "cursed widow and orphan makers." 

The barrel of the typical rifle of those days was 
about four feet in lengthy the stock slender^, short 
and strongly curved, so that the sights came easily 
and directly up to the level of the eye in aiming. 
The sights were low and close to the barrel, some 
pieces being provided with two hind sights, a foot 
or so apart, so that the marksman might not draw 
either too fine or too coarse a bead with the low 
silver or bone crescent of the fore sight. Usually 
the rear sight was a simple, flat bar, finely notched, 
and placed a foot or fifteen inches in front of the 
breech of the barrel, so that the eye should focus 
easily and sharply at the notch of the rear sight. 
Such was the care with which the sights were ad- 
justed that the rifleman sometimes put the finishing 
touches on the notch with so soft a cutting tool 
as a common pin, working away patiently, a little at 
a time, lest he should by too great haste go too deep 
into the rear sight, and so cause the piece to shoot 
otherwise than "true." 

The delicately arranged set-triggers made pos- 
sible an instantaneous discharge without any ap- 



THE AMERICAN RIFLE 15 

preciable disturbance of the aim when once obtained ; 
and the long distance between the hind sight and 
fore sight, the steadiness of the piece, owing to its 
length and weight, the closeness of the line of sight 
to the line of the trajectory of a ball driven with 
a relatively heavy powder charge, all conspired to 
render extreme accuracy possible with this arm, 
and this accuracy became so general throughout the 
American frontier that to be a poor rifle shot was 
to be an object of contempt. 

Each rifle was provided with its own bullet mold, 
which cast a round ball of such size that when prop- 
erly ^^patched" it fitted the bore of the piece tighth^, 
so tightly that in some cases a ^'^starter" or section 
of false barrel was used, into* which the ball was 
forced, sometimes being swaged in with a mallet 
and a short starting rod. The ramrod proper was 
carried in pipes attached to the long wooden stock, 
which extended to the muzzle of the barrel under- 
neath the piece. One end of this rod was protected 
with a brass ferrule, and the other was provided 
with a screw, into which was twisted the "worm" 
used in cleaning the arm. 

The pouch of the hunter always carried some flax 
or tow for use in cleaning the piece. The rifleman 
would wind a wisp of this tow about the end of the 
*Vorm," moisten it by passing it between his lips. 



16 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

and then pass the tightly fitting wad of tow up and 
down the barrel until the latter was perfectly free 
from powder residue. Then the little ball, nicely 
patched, was forced down on the powder diarge by 
the slender ramrod, made with great care from the 
toughest straight-grained hickory wood. 

Powder and ball were precious in those early days, 
and though strong men ever love the sports of 
weapons, waste could not be tolerated even in sport. 
Sometimes at night the frontiersmen would gather 
for the pastime of '^^snuffing the candle/' and he 
was considered a clumsy rifleman who but fanned 
the flame with his bullet, or cut too deeply into the 
base of the candle-wick, and so extinguished the 
light. Again the riflemen would engage in "driv- 
ing the nail" with the rifle ball, or would shoot at a 
tiny spot of black on a board or a blazed tree- 
trunk, firing a number of balls into the same mark. 
In nearly all such cases the balls were dug out of 
the tree or plank into which they had been fired, and 
were run over again into fresh bullets for use at 
another time. Thus grew the skill of the American 
rifleman, with whose weapon most of the feats of 
latter day short-range marksmanship could be dupli- 
cated.* 

•In a careful test an old squirrel-rifle, for three generations 
in the author's family, and now nearly one hundred years old, 
•was fired five times, at a distance of 60 yards, and the point of 
the finger would cover all five of the balls, which made practically 



THE AMERICAN EIFLE 17 

The early American depended upon his rifle in 
supporting and defending his family. Without it he 
had not dared to move across the Alleghanies. With 
it he dared to go anywhere, knowing that it would 
furnish him food and fending. When the deer and 
turkey became less numerous near him, he moved 
his home farther westward, where game was more 
abundant. 

His progress was bitterly contested by the Indian 
savages, all the way cross the American continent, 
but they perished before this engine of civilization, 
which served its purpose across the timbered Ap- 
palachians, down the watershed to the Mississippi, 
up the long and winding streams of the western 
lands, over the Eockies, and down the slopes of 
the Sierras to the farther sea. Had it never 
known change it had not been American. An ax is an 
ax, because a tree is a tree, whether in the Alle- 
ghanies or the Eockies; but the rifle met in time 
different conditions. The great plains furnished 
larger game animals, and demanded longer range 
in arms, so that in time the rifle shot a heavier ball. 

Wlien the feverish intensity of American life had 



but one ragged hole. The author's father handled the old weapon 
on this occasion. Again, in the author's hands, it shot out in 
succession the spots or pips of a playing card, the ten of clubs, 
at such distance as left the spots only clearly distinguishable. 
This piece was altered from flint lock to pill-percussion lock, and 
later to the percussion cap lock. 



18 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

asked yet more haste^ there came the repeating rifle, 
firing rapidly a number of shots, an invention now 
used all over the earth. In time there came also 
the revolving pistol, rapid, destructive, American. 
These things had not to do with the early west- 
bound mian, this wilderness traveler, himself per- 
force almost savage, shod with moccasins, wear- 
ing the fringed hide tunic that was never in the 
designs of Providence intended for any unmanly 
man, and that fits ill to-day the figure of any round- 
paunched city dweller. Feather or plume he did not 
wear in his hat, for such things pertained rather 
to the hired voyager than to the independent home 
builder. Ornamentation was foreign to his garb 
and to his weaponry. He had much to do. The 
way was hard. ISTo matter how he must travel, this 
long rifle was with him. At his belt, in the little 
bag of buckskin, were the bullets in their stoppered 
pouch, the cleaning worm, the extra flint or two, the 
awl for mending shoon or clothing. 

So were equipped the early Americans, gaunt, 
keen, tireless, that marched to meet the invading 
forces at the battle of Few Orleans; and when the 
officers of the British army, on the day after that 
stricken field, found half their dead shot between the 
eyes, they knew they could lead their troops no more 
against such weaponry and such weapon bearers. 
The rifle had won the West, and it would hold it fast. 



CHAPTER III 

THE AMERICAN BOAT 

Here is that fairy ship of the wilderness, the birch- 
bark canoe, the first craft of America, antedating 
even the arrival of the white man. It is the ship of 
risk and of adventure, belonging by right to him who 
goes far and travels light, who is careless of his home 
coming. It is a boat that now carries the voyager, 
and now is carried by him. It is a great-hearted 
craft. You shall take it upon your shoulders, and 
carry it a mile across the land trail, without need- 
ing to set it down; but when you place it on the 
water it in turn will carry you and your fellow, and 
yet another, and your household goods of the wilder- 
ness up to five times your weight. 

Freakish as a woman, as easily unsettled, yet if 
you be master it shall take you over combing waves, 
and down yeasty rapids and against steady current, 
until finally you shall find yourself utterly apart from 
the familiar haunts of man, about you only the wil- 
derness, the unadventured. This is the ship of the 
wilderness, the fairy ship, the ship of heroes. To- 
day it is passing away. With it goes great store of 

romance and adventure. 

19 



go THE WAY TO THE WEST 

The red man taught the white man how to hiiild 
and how to use this boat. He taught how to cut the 
long strips of toughest hark from the birch-tree, 
prying it oS with sharpened pole or driven wooden 
wedge. He showed how to build the frame of the 
boat on the ground, or in a long hole dug in the 
ground, where stakes hold fast the curves of the 
gunwales, between which are later forced the steamed 
splints that serve as ribs and as protection for the 
fragile skin, soaked soft and pliable, which is pres- 
ently laid on the frame of gunwale and rib and 
bottom splint. This covering of bark is sewn to- 
gether with the thread of the forest, fiber of swamp 
conifers — '^Vautp," the Indians of the North call 
this thread. 

Then over the seams is run the melted pitch and 
resin taken from the woods. The edges of the bark 
skin are made fast at the gunwales, the sharply bent 
bows are guarded carefully from cracks where the 
straining comes, and the narrow thwarts, wide as your 
three fingers, are lashed in, serving as brace and as 
all the seat you shall find when weary from kneeling. 
The fresh bark is clean and sweet upon the new-made 
ship, the smell of the resin is clean. Each line of the 
boat is full of spirit and grace and beauty. 

The builder turns it over, and where he finds a bub- 
ble in the pitching of a seam he bends down and puts 



THE AMERICAN BOAT 21 

his lips to it, sucking in his breath, to find if air conies 
through. So he tests it, well and thoroughly, mend- 
ing and patching slowly and carefully, until at last 
it pleases him throughout. And then he places his 
new-made ship on the water, where it sits high and 
light, spinning and turning at its tether, never still 
for an instant, but shifting like a wild duck under 
the willows, responsive to the least breath of the 
passing airs. It is eager to go on. It will go far, 
in its life of a year or two. If it gets a wound from 
the rocks, or from the clumsiness of the tyro that 
drives it upon the beach instead of anchoring it 
free, then it is easily mended by a strip of bark and 
some forest pitch. ^Yhen at last it loses its youth, and 
cracks or soaks in water so freely that it takes too 
long to dry it at the noonday pipe-smoking, then it 
is not so difficult to build another in the forest. 

The canoe is as the ax and the rifle, an agent 
economical, capable of great results in return for 
small expenditure of energy. It is American. There 
was much to do, far to gO'. It was thus because 
America existed as it did. 

'No craft has been found easier of propulsion to 
one knowing the art of the paddle. The voyager 
makes his paddle about as long as his rifle, up to his 
chin in length. He paddles with the blade always 
on one side of the canoe. As the blade is with- 



22 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

drawn from the backward stroke, it is turned slightly 
in the water, so that the. course of the bow is still 
held straight. If he would approach a landing side- 
wdse with his boat, he makes his paddle describe short 
half curves, back and forth, and the little boat fol- 
lows the paddle obediently. The advance of the 
canoe is light, silent, spirit-like. It is full of mys- 
tery, this boat. Yet it is kind to those who know 
it, as is the wilderness and as are all its creatures. 

This is the boat of the northern traveler, the voy- 
ager of the upper ways. In the South, where the 
birch does not grow in proper dimensions, the bark 
of the elm has on occasion served to make a small 
craft. In different parts of the North, too, the 
birch canoe takes different shapes. In the northeast 
the Abenakis made it long and with little rake, with 
low bow and stern and with bottom swelling outward 
safely under the tumble-home, — this stable model 
serving for the strong streams of the forested regions 
of the North. Far to the west, where roll the 
great inland lakes, the jib ways made their boats 
higher at bow and stern, wider of beam, shorter, 
rounder of bottom, all the better fitted for short 
and choppy waves. 

Then, under the white fur traders' tutelage, there 
were made great ships of birch-bark, the canot du 
Nord of the Hudson Bay trade, such as came down 



THE AMERICAN BOAT 23 

with ricih burdens of furs when the brigades started 
down-stream to the m-arkets; or yet the greater canot 
du maitre once used on the Great Lakes, a craft that 
needed a dozen to a dozen and a lialf paddles for its 
propulsion. Again, at the heads of the far off North- 
western streams there were canoes so small as to carry 
but a single person, propelled by a pair of sticks, one 
in each hand of the occupant, the points of these 
hand-sticks pushing against the bottom of the stream. 
But ever this ship of the wilderness was so contrived 
that its crew could drive it by water or carry it by 
land. 

Thus were the portages mastered, thuB did the man 
with small gear to hinder him get out from home, 
westward into the wilderness. Down stream or up 
stream, this boat went far. Paddle or sail or shod- 
den pole served for the wanderer before the trails 
were made, and before the boats of the white settlers 
followed where the savage red men and scarcely less 
savage white adventurers had found the way. 

There were other boats for the early traveler, and 
these were employed by those that had crossed the 
Alleghanies on foot and would fare farther west- 
ward. The dugout, made of the sycamore or sassa- 
fras log, ten to twenty feet in length, narrow, un- 
stable, thick-skinned and a bit clumsy, was good 
enough for one pushing on down-stream, or prowl- 



24 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

ing about in sluggish, silent bayous. Tbis was 
the boat of the South in the early days. Soon the 
great flat-boat succeeded it for those that traveled 
with family goods or in large parties. The wooden 
boats came later, the flat-boat after the dugout, the 
keel-boat but following the far trail of the birch-bark 
to the upper ways, or perchance passing, slipping 
down-stream, the frail hide coracle of the hunter 
that had ventured unaccompanied far into unknown 
lands. 

Above all things in these early days must com- 
pactness and lightness be studied. This Ameri- 
can traveler was poor in the goods of this world ; his 
possessions made small bulk. This ax made him 
bivouac or castle, or helped him make raft or canoe. 
This rifle gave him food and clothing. He walked 
westward to the westward flowing streams, and there 
this light craft, dancing, beckoning, alluring, in- 
vited him yet on and on, proffering him carriage for 
his scanty store, offering obedience to him who was 
the master of the wilderness, of its alluring secrets 
and its immeasurable resources. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE AMERICAN HORSE 

Observe here a creature, a dumb brute, that has 
saved some centuries of time. Indeed, without this 
American horse, the American civilization perhaps 
could never have been. Without the ax, the rifle, 
the boat and the horse there could have been no 
West. 

Tb-day we would in some measure dispense with 
the horse, but in the early times no part of man's 
possessions was more indispensable. This animal 
was not then quite as we find him to-day in the older 
settled portions of the country. In some of our 
wilder regions we can still see him somewhat as he 
once was, rough, wiry, hardy, capable of great en- 
deavor, easily supported upon the country over 
which he pas^d. 

Naturally the early west-bound traveler could not 
take with him food for his horse, and the latter 
must be quite independent of grain. Com, ex- 
ceedingly difficult to raise, was for the master 

alone. The horse must live on grass food, and 

25 



26 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

find it where he stopped at night. During the 
day he must carry the traveler and' his weapons, 
another horse perhaps serving as transportation for 
food or household goods; or, if there was a family 
with the traveler, perhaps one horse sufficed for the 
mother and a child or two. The weak might ride, 
the strong could trudge alongside. Many women 
have so traveled out into the West — women as sweet 
as any of to-day. 

Wei have here, then, one more simple, economical 
and effective factor in the resources of the early 
American. Beauty, finish, elegance, were not im- 
perative. Strength, stamina, hardihood, these things 
must be possessed. The horse must be durable; and 
so he was. The early settlers on the Atlantic 
coast brought from over the seas horses of good 
blood. Virginia was noted as a breeding ground 
before the yet more famous Blue Grass Region of 
Kentucky began to produce horses of great quality. 
The use of the horse in the New World went on as it 
did in the Old. The French in the I^orth, the Eng- 
lish at the mid-continent, the Spanish in the South, 
all brought over horses ; and even to-day the types of 
the three sections are distinct. 

The horse with which we are concerned was the 
hardy animal, able to find food in the forest glades or 
laurel thickets of the Appalachians; that served as 



THE AMERICAN HORSE 37 

pack-horse in tlie hunt near home, as baggage horse in 
the journey away from home. In those days the horse 
was rather a luxury than a necessity. All earlier or 
Eastern America was at short range. The rifle was 
short in range; the man himself was a footman, and 
did not travel very far in actual leagues. 

For a generation he could walk, or at least travel 
by boat. But when he came to the edge of the open 
country of the plains, when he saw above him ihe vast 
bow of the great River of the West, across whose arc 
he needed to travel direct, then there stood waiting 
for him, as though by providential appointment, this 
humble creature, this coward, this hero of an animal, 
mm afraid of its own shadow, now willing to face 
steel and powder-smoke, patient, dauntless, capable of 
great exertion and great accomplishment. So in the 
land of great distances the traveler became a 
mounted man; the horse became part of him, no 
longer a luxury, but a necessity. 

The Spanish contributed most largely to the Ameri- 
can holding of that vast indefinite West of ours that 
they once claimed, when they allowed to straggle north- 
ward across the plains, into the hand of Indian or 
white man, this same lean and wiry horse, carrying to 
the deserts of America the courage of his far-oif 
Moorish blood, his African adaptability to long jour- 



28 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

neys on short fare.* The man that followed the 
Ohio and Missouri to the edge of the plains, the 
trapper, the hunter, the adventurer of the fur trade, 
had been wholly helpless without the horse. For a 
time the trading posts might cling to the streams, 
but there was a call to a vast empire between the 
streams, where one could not walk, where no boat 
could go, nor any wheeled vehicle whatever. Here, 
then, came the horse, the thing needed. 

The white adventurer may have brought his horse 
with him by certain slow generations of advance, or 
he may have met him as he moved West; at times 
he captured and tamed him for himself, again he 
bought him of the Indian, or took him without pur- 
chase. Certainly in the great open reaches of the 
farther West the horse became man's most valuable 
property, the unit of all recognized current values. 
The most serious, the most unforgivable crime was 
that of horse stealing. To kill a man in war, man 
to man, was a matter of man and man, and to be re- 



*"Wherever pictographs of the horse appear the representations 
must have been done subsequent to the advent of Coronado, or 
the conquistadors of Florida. There are no horse portraits in 
Arizona and vicinity, nor up the Pacific coast, but they are fre- 
quent in Texas and in the trans-Mississippi region. The domestic 
horse (not Eohippus, the diminutive quaternary animal which 
was indigenous) was introduced into Florida from Santo Do- 
mingo by the Spaniards early in the 15th century, as well as into 
South America, where it spread in fifteen years as far south as 
Patagonia."— Chas. Hallock, the "American Antiquarian," Janu- 
ary, 1902. 



THE AMERICAN HOUSE 29 

garded at times with, philosophy; but to take away 
without quarrel and by stealth what was most essen- 
tial to man's life or welfare was held equivalent 
to murder unprovoked and of a despicable nature. To 
be ^^set afoot" was one of the horrors long preserved 
in memory by the idiom of Western speech. 
, The food of this horse, then, was generally what 
he might gain by forage. In furnishings, his bridle 
was sometimes a hide lariat, his saddle the buckskin 
pad of the Indians. Stirrups the half-wild white man 
sometimes discarded, after the fashion of the Indian, 
who rode by the clinging of his legs turned back, or by 
purchase of his toes thrust in between the foreleg and 
the body of his mount. A fleet horse, one much val- 
ued *in the chase or in war, might be his master's 
pet, tied close to his house of skin at night, or pick- 
eted near-by at the lonesome bivouac. He might 
have braided in his forelock the eagle feather that 
his white master himself would have disdained to 
wear as ornament. Of grooming the horse knew 
nothing, neither did he ever know a day of shelter. 
His stable was the heart of a willow thicket if the 
storm blew fierce. In winter-time his hay was the bark 
of the Cottonwood, under whose gnarled arms the 
hunter had pitched his winter tepee or built his 
rough war-house of crooked logs. When all the wide 
plain was a sheet of white, covered again by the 



30 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

driven blinding snows of the prairie storm, then this 
hardy animal must paw down through the snow and 
find his own food, the dried grass curled close to the 
ground. Where the ox would perish the horse could 
survive. He was simple, practicable, durable, even 
under the hardest conditions. The horse of the Ameri- 
can West ought to have place on the American coat 
of arms. 

The horse might be a riding animal, or at times a 
beast of burden. In the earliest days he was packed 
simply, sometimes with hide pockets or panniers 
after the Indian fashion, with a lash rope perhaps 
holding the load together roughly. Later on in the 
story of the West there came a day when it was nec- 
essary to utilize all energies more exactly, and then 
thej-oading of the horse became an interesting and 
intricate science. The carry-all or paainier was no 
longer essential, and the packs were made up of all 
manner of things transported. The pack saddle, a 
pair of X's connected with side bars, the ^^saw buck" 
pack-saddle of the West, which was an idea perhaps 
taken from the Indians, was the immediate aid of 
the packer. The horse and the lash rope in combi- 
nation were born of necessity, the necessity of long 
trails across the mountains and the plains. 

Thus the horse trebled the independence of the 
Western man, made it possible for him to travel as 



THE AMERICAN HORSE 31 

far as he liked across unknown lands, made him 
soldier, settler, trader, merchant; enabled him indeed 
to build a West that had grown into giant stature 
even before the day of steam. 



CHAPTER V 

THE PATHWAY OF THE WATERS* 

On a busy street of a certain Western city there 
appeared, not long ago, a figure whose peculiarities 
attracted the curious attention of the throng through 
which he passed. It was a man, tall, thin, bronzed, 
wide-hatted, long-haired, clad in the garb of a day 
gone by. How he came to. the city, whence he came, 
or why, it boots little to ask. There he was, one of 
the old-time ^'long-haired men" of the West. His 
face, furrowed with the winds of the high plains and 
of the mountains, and bearing still the lines of bold- 
ness and confidence, had in these new surroundings 
taken on a shade of timorous anxiety. His eye was 
disturbed. At his temples the hair was gray, and 
the long locks that dropped to his shoulders were 
thin and pitiful. A man of another day, of a bygone 
country, he babbled of scoutings, of warfare with 
savages, of the chase of the buffalo. None knew 
what he spoke. He babbled, grieved, and vanished. 

Into the same city there wandered, from a some- 
what more recent West, another man grown swiftly 



♦The Century Magazine, November, 1901. 
32 



THE PATHWAY OF THE WATEES 33 

old. Ten years earlier this figure might have been 
seen over all the farming-lands of the West, most 
numerous near the boom towns and the land-offices. 
He was here transplanted, set down in the greatest 
boom town of them all, but, alas! too old and too 
alien to take root. 

He wore the same long-tailed coat, the same white 
hat that marked him years ago — tall-crowned, not 
wide-rimmed; the hat that swept across the Missouri 
Eiver in the early eighties. His beard was now grown 
gray, his eye watery, his expression subdued, and no 
longed buoyantly and irresistibly hopeful. His pencil, 
as ready as ever to explain the price of lots or land, 
had lost its erstwhile convincing logic. From his soul 
had departed that strange, irrational, adorable belief, 
birthright of the American that was, by which he was 
once sure that the opportunities of the land that bore 
him were perennial and inexhaustible. This man 
sought now no greatness and no glory. He wanted 
only the chance to make a living. And, think you, 
he came of a time when a man might be a carpenter 
at dawn, merchant at noon, lawyer by night, and yet 
be respected every hour of the day, if he deserved it 
as a man. 

It was exceeding sweet to be a savage. It is pleasant 
to dwell upon the independent character of Western 
life, and to go back to the glories of that land and 



34 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

day when a man who had a rifle and a saddle-blanket 
was sure of a living, and need ask neither advice nor 
permission of any living soul. Those days, vivid, ad- 
venturous, heroic, will have no counterpart on tiie 
earth again. Those early Americans, who raged and 
roared across the West, how unspeakably swift was 
the play in which they had their part ! There, 
surely, was a drama done under the strictest law of 
the unities, under the sun of a single day. 

No fiction can ever surpass in vividness the vast, 
heroic drama of the West. The clang of steel, the 
shoutings of the captains, the stimulus of wild ad- 
venture — of these things, certainly, there has been 
no lack. There has been close about us for two hun- 
dred years the sweeping action of a story keyed 
higher than any fiction, more unbelievably bold, more 
incredibly keen in spirit. And now we come upon 
the tame and tranquil sequel of that vivid play of 
human action. "Anticlimax !" cries all that human- 
ity that cares to think, that dares to regret, that 
once dared to hope. "Tell us of the West that was,'' 
demands that humanity, and with the best of warrant ; 
"play for us again the glorious drama of the past, 
and let us see again the America that once was 
ours." 

Historian, artist, novelist, poet, must all in some 
measure fail to answer this demand, for each genera- 



THE PATHWAY OF THE WATERS 35 

tion buries its own dead, and each epoch, to be un- 
derstood, must be seen in connection with its own 
living causes and effects and interwoven surround- 
ings. Yet it is pleasant sometimes to seek among 
causes, and I conceive that a certain interest may at- 
tach to a quest that goes farther than a mere sum- 
mons for the spurred and booted Western dead to 
rise. Let us ask, What was the West ? What caused 
its growth and its changes? What was the Western 
man, and why did his character become what it was ? 
What future is there for the West to-day ? We shall 
find that the answers to these questions run wider 
than the West, and, indeed, wider than America. 

In the pursuit of this line of thought we need ask 
only a few broad premises. These premises may 
leave us not so much of self-vaunting as we might 
wish, and may tend to diminish our esteem of the im- 
portance of individual as well as national accomplish- 
ment; for, after all and before all, we are but flecks 
on the surface of the broad, moving ribbon of fate. 
We are all, — Easterner and Westerner, dweller of 
the Old World or the New, bond or free, of to-day or 
of yesterday, — but the result of the mandate that 
bade mankind to increase and multiply, that bade 
mankind to take possession of the earth. We have 
each of us taken over temporarily that portion of 
the earth and its fullness allotted or made possible to 



36 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

us by that Providence to which all things belong. 
We have each of ns done this along the lines of the 
least possible resistance, for this is the law of organic 
Hfe. 

The story of the taking over of the earth into pos- 
session has been but a story of travel. Aryan, Cymri, 
Goth, Vandal, Westerner — they are all one. The ques- 
tion of occupying the unoccupied world has been only 
a question of transportation, of invasion, and of oc- 
cupation along the lines of least resistance. Hence 
we have at hand, in a study of transportation of the 
West at different epochs, a clue that will take us 
very near to the heart of things. 

We read to-day of forgotten Phenicia and of an- 
cient Britain. They were unlike, because they were 
far apart. The ancient captains who directed the 
ships that brought them approximately together were 
great men in their day, fateful men. The captains of 
transportation that made all America one land are 
still within our reach, great men, fateful men; and 
they hold a romantic interest under their grim tale 
of material things. You and I live where they said 
we must live. It was they who marked out the very 
spot where the fire was to rise upon your hearth-stone. 
You have married a certain Phenician because they 
said that this must be your fate. Your children 
were born because some captain said they should be. 



THE PATHWAY OF THE WATERS 37 

You are here not of your own volition. The day 
of volitions, let ns remember, is gone. 

The West was sown by a race of giants, and reaped 
by a race far different and in a day dissimilar. Though 
the day of rifle and ax, of linsey-woolsey and hand- 
ground meal, went before the time of trolley-cars and 
self-binders, of purple and fine linen, it must be ob- 
served that in the one day or the other the same 
causes were at work, and back of all these causes 
were the original law and the original mandate. The 
force of this primeval impulse was behind all those 
early actors, and Roundhead Cavalier, praying man 
and fighting man, who had this continent for a stage. 
It was behind the men that followed inland from 
the sea the first prophets of adventure. It is behind 
us to-day. The Iliad of the West is only the story 
of a mighty pilgrimage. 

When the Spaniard held the mouth of the Great 
River, the Frenchman the upper sources, the Ameri- 
can only the thin line of coast whose West was the 
Alleghanies, how then did the west-bound adventurers 
travel, these folk who established half a dozen homes 
for every generation ? The answer would seem easy. 
They traveled as did the Cimri, the Goths — in the 
easiest way they could. It was a day of raft and 
boat, of saddle-horse and pack-horse, of a^ and rifle, 



38 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

and little other luggage. Mankind followed the path- 
ways of the waters. 

Bishop Berkeley, prophetic soul, wrote his line: 
^^estward the course of empire takes its way.'^ The 
public has always edited it to read the "star'' of 
empire that "takes it way" to the West. If one 
will read this poem in connection with a government 
census map^ he can not fail to see how excellent is 
the amendment. Excellent census map, that holds 
between its covers the greatest poem, the greatest 
drama ever written! Excellent census map, that 
marks the center of population of America with a 
literal star, and, at the curtain of each act^ the 
lapse of each ten years, advances this star with 
the progress of the drama, westward, westward, ever 
westward! Excellent scenario, its scheme done in 
red and yellow and brown, patched each ten years, 
ragged, blurred, until, after a hundred years, the 
scheme is finished, and the color is solid all across 
the page, showing that the end has come, and that 
the land has yielded to the law ! 

The first step of this star of empire, that con- 
cluded in 1800, barely removed it from its initial 
point on the Chesapeake. The direction .was to- 
ward the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania. The 
government at Washington, young as it was, knew 
that the Ohio River, reached from the North by a 



THE PATHWAY OF THE WATERS 39 

dozen trails from tlie Great Lakes, and running out 
into that West whicli even then was coveted by three 
nations, was of itself a priceless possession. The 
restless tide of humanity spread from that point ac- 
cording to principles as old as the world. Having 
a world before them from which to choose their 
homes, the men of that time sought out those homes 
along the easiest lines. 

The first thrust of the out-bound population was 
not along the parallels of latitude westward, as is 
supposed to be the rule, but to the south and south- 
east, into the valleys of the Appalachians, where the 
hills would raise corn, and the streams would carry 
it. The early emigrants learned that a raft would 
eat nothing, that a boat runs well down-stream. Men 
still clung to the seaboard region, though even then 
they exemplified the great law of population that 
designates the river valleys to be the earliest and most 
permanent centers of population. The first trails of 
the Appalachians were the waterways. 

Dear old New England, the land sought out as the 
home of religious freedom, and really perhaps the 
most intolerant land the earth ever knew, some- 
times flatters herself that she is the mother of the 
West. Not so. New England holds mortgages only 
on the future of the West, not on its past. The 
first outshoots of the seaboard civilization to run 



40 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

forth into the West did not trace back to the stem 
and rock-bound shore where the tolerants were pun- 
ishing those whfo did not agree with them. 

New York, then, was perhaps the parent of the 
West ? By no means, however blandly pleasant that 
belief might be to many for whom New York must 
be ever the first cause and center of the American civ- 
ilization, not the reflection-point of that civilization. 
The rabid Westerner may enjoy the thought that 
neither New England nor New York was the actual 
ancestor. Perhaps he may say that the West had no 
parent, but was born Minerva-like. In this he would 
be wrong. The real mother of the West was the South. 
It was she who bore this child, and it has been much 
at her expense that it has grown so large and ma- 
tured so swiftly. If you sing "arms and the man" 
for the West, you must sing Southerner and not Pur- 
itan, knight-errant and not psalmodist. The path 
of empire had its head on the Chesapeake. There 
was the American Ararat. 

"The great American journeyings were far under 
way before New England appeared to realize that 
there was a greater America toward the West. The 
musket bearers of the New England states, the fight- 
ing men of the South, and the riflemen of what 
might already have been called the West, had fin- 



THE PATHWAY OF THE WATERS 41 

ishecl the Revolutionary War long before New Eng- 
land had turned her eyes westward. The pilgrim- 
age over the Appalachians was made, the new prov- 
inces of Kentucky and Tennessee were fighting for 
a commerce and a commercial highway of their own, 
while yet the most that Xew England, huddled 
along her stern and rock-bound shore^ could do was 
to talk of shutting off these Westerners from their 
highway of the Mississippi, and compelling them to 
trade back with the tidewater provinces of what was 
not yet an America. 

"Canny and cautious, New York and New England 
were ready to fear this new country in which iheiy re- 
fused to believe; were ready to cripple it, although 
they declined to credit its future. The pioneers of 
the South fought their way into the West. New 
England bought her way, and that after all the serious 
joroblems of pioneering had been solved. The 'Ohio 
Land Company' of Rufus Putnam, Benjamin Tucker 
and their none too honest associate, the New Bedford 
preacher, Manasseh Cutler, were engaged in the first 
great land steal ever known in the West. They did 
not fight the Indians for their holdings, but went to 
Congress, and with practical methods secured five 
million acres of land at a price of about eight or nine 
cents an acre; the first offer to Congress being a 
million dollars for a million and a half acres of what 



42 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

is now the state of Ohio, the payment to be in soldiers' 
scrip, worth twelve cents on the dollar. 

"The Ohio company took its settlers out to its new 
land as a railway does its colonists to-day. Roaching 
the Ohio River, they descended it in a bullet-proof 
barge, called ^with strange irony' the 'Mayflower.' 
They entered the mouth of the Muskingum and 
anchored under the guns of a United States fort."* 

This is how N'ew England got into the West. 
There is no hero story there. The men of the 
South, men of North Carolina and Virginia, most 
of whom had come from Pennsylvania and dropped 
down along the east slope of the Appalachians, as 
it were sparring these mountain ranges for an open- 
ing until at length they had found the ways of the 
game trails and Indian trails from headwater to 
headwater, and so had reached the west-bound streams 
— these actual adventurers had built Harrodsburg 
and Boonesborough seventeen years before the Ohio 
company entered the Muskingum. Already there 
was a West; even a West far beyond Boonesborough 
and its adjacent corn grounds. 

This actual record of the upper states in the ex- 
ploration of the West is to-day not generally remem- 
bered nor understood. Sometimes an ardent Kew 
Englander \\dll explain that the Puritans would have 

*Kephart. 



THE PATHWAY OF THE WATERS 43 

earlier pressed out westward had it not been for the 
barrier of the Iroquois on their western borders. 
They read their history but ill who do not know 
that the Iroquois trafficked always with, the English 
as against the French; whereas Kentucky, the land 
opened by the Southern pioneers, was occupied by 
a more dangerous red population, made up of many 
tribes, having no policy but that of war, and no 
friends outside of each separate motley hunting party, 
sure to be at knife's point with either white or red 
strangers. The most difficult and most dangerous 
frontier was that of the South; yet it was the South 
that won through. 

There are two explanations of this incontroverti- 
ble historical fact. One lies perhaps in the general 
truth that early pioneers nearly always cling to the 
river valle3'S, perhaps not more for purposes of trans- 
portation by water than in obedience to a certain in- 
stinct that seems to hold the pathways, of the 
streams as foreordained guidance. The man that is 
lost in the wilderness hails with delight the appear- 
ance of a stream. It will lead him somewhere; it 
will guide him back again. Near it will be game, 
near it, too, rich soil. The man that enters the wil- 
derness deliberately does so along the waterways. 

All the great initial explorations have been made in 
this way. The men of Kentucky and Tennessee having 



44 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

reached the headwaters of the Kentucky, the Tennes- 
see, the Holston or kindred riverways, moved out into 
their promised land along paths, as it were, foreor- 
dained. The rivers of the North did not run out into 
the West, but pointed ever toward the sea. This is one 
explanation of the somewhat inglorious part of New 
England in the discovery of the West. It does not 
explain her narrowness of view in regard to that 
West after it had been discovered by others; neither 
does this geographical explanation, in the opinion of 
many, cover the main phenomena of her timid at- 
tude in regard to Western exploration. 

The true reason, in the belief of these students, is 
to be found in the character of the New England 
population, as compared tO' the bolder breed of men 
who overran the western sections of Pennsylvania 
and for two generations were in continuous touch 
with the wilderness and its savagery. This subject 
is taken up interestingly by Horace Kephart, a 
scholar of much acquaintance with early American 
history, in the course of an able paper. It is very 
much worth while for any one who wishes an actual 
picture of the march across the Appalachians to read 
his conclusions. 

"In a vague way we think of all the East as old," 
says this writer, "and all the West as new. We ' 
picture civilization as advancing westward from the 



THE PATHWAY OF THE WATERS 45 

Atlantic in a long, straight front, like a wave or a 
line of battle. But in point of fact it was not so. 
There was a permanent settlement of Europeans a 
thousand miles to the west of us before the Pilgrims 
landed at Plymouth. Caholda and Kaskaskia were 
thriving villages before Baltimore was founded ; and 
our own city of St. Louis wais building in the same 
year that New Jersey became a British possession. 
At a time when Daniel Boone was hunting beaver 
on the Osage and the Missouri, Fenimore Cooper was 
drawing the types for future "Leatherstocking Tales" 
from his neighbors in a ^Vilderness" only a hundred 
and fifty miles from New York City. 

"American settlement advanced toward the Mis- 
sissippi in the shape of a wedge, of which the en- 
tering edge was first Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, 
then the Shenandoah valley, then Louisville, and 
finally St. Louis. When the second census of the 
L^nited States was taken, in 1800, nearly all the 
white inhabitants of our country lived in a tri- 
angle formed by a diagonal southwestward from 
Portland, Maine, tO' the mouth of the Tennessee 
Eiver, here meeting another diagonal running north- 
westward from Savannah, with the Atlantic for a 
base. Central and western New York, northern 
Pennsylvania., and all the territory north of the 
Ohio Eiver, save in its immediate vicinity, were al- 



46 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

most unirLhabited' by whites, and so were Georgia, 
Alabama, and Mississippi. Yet the state of Ken- 
tucky had half as many people as Massachusetts, 
and Tennessee had already been admitted into the 
Union. 

'^'^As a rule, geographical expansion proceeds along 
the lines of least resistance, following the natural 
highways afforded by navigable rivers and open 
plains. It is easily turned aside by mountain chains, 
dense forests, and hostile natives. Especially was 
this true in the days before railroads. But the de- 
velopment of our older West shows a striking ex- 
ception to this rule; for the entering wedge was act- 
ually driven through one of the most rugged, diffi- 
cult, and inhospitable regions to be found along the 
whole frontier of the British possessions. 

^^This fact is strange enough to fix our attention; 
but it is doubly strange when we consider that there 
was no climatic, political nor economic necessity for 
such defiance of nature's laws. We can see why the 
Mississippi should have been explored from the north, 
rather than from its mouth, because Canada was set- 
tled before Louisiana, and it is easier to float down- 
stream than to pole or cordelle against the current. 
But why was not the West entered and settled 
through the obviously easy course of the Mohawk 
Valley? 



THE PATHWAY OF THE WATEES 47 

"Beyond this valley were gentle slopes, and many 
a. route practicable for settlers into the rich country 
of OhiO'. The central trail of the Iroquois, beaten 
smoother than a wagon-road, ran straight west from 
Albany, through the fairest portion of Xew York, 
to the present site of Buffalo, and thence followed 
the southern shore of Lake Erie into Ohio. Where 
it crossed the Genesee, the old war-trail of the Sen- 
ecas branched off to the south, passing behind the 
farthermost ramparts of the Alleghanies, to the forks 
of the Ohio. Moccasined feet traveling over these 
trails for centuries had worn them from three to 
twelve inches into the ground, so that they were easy 
to follow on the darkest night. These were only 
two of several well-marked routes from ancient Al- 
bany to the new West. It was to this easy communi- 
cation with the country beyond the Appalachians 
that the Iroquois owed their commanding position 
on the continent. 

"These Iroquois were in the way, to be sure; but 
with them New York had every advantage over her 
sister provinces. Her policy toward these powerful 
Indians was conciliatory. She was allied Avith them 
against the French. The Six Nations ravaged the 
frontiers of all the other colonies, from Massachu- 
setts to Carolina, and carried their conquests to the 
Mississippi, but they spared New York and even in- 



48 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

vited her to build forts on their border as outposts 
against the French. New York had the most influ- 
ential Indian agent of his time in Sir William John- 
son, who had married the sister of the Mohawk cliief 
Brant, and by her had several sons who were war- 
ichiefs of the Iroquois. In 1745 the Iroquois even 
ceded to N'ew York a strip of land sixty miles mde, 
along the southern shores of lakes Ontario and Erie, 
extending to the modern Cleveland. It should have 
been easy for the Knickerbockers to secure passage 
for their emigrants into the western country had 
they chosen to ask it. 

"On the other hand, the southern colonies had no 
easy access to the West. Nature herself had bidden 
these people to rest content in their tidewater re- 
gions, and frowned upon any westward expansion 
by interposing the mighty barriers of the Blue Eidge 
and the Alleghanies, rising tier beyond tier in parallel 
chains from northern Pemisylvania to Alabama. 
Few trails crossed these mountains. From base to 
summit tliey were clad in dense forest, matted into 
jungle by luxuriant undergrowth. Xo one knew 
what lay beyond them, nor how far through this 
^forest, savage, harsh, impregnable,' the traveler must 
bore until he reached land fit for settlement. 

''*^It was well known, however, that the trans- Alle- 
ghany region, whatever might be its economic fea- 



THE PATHWAY OF THE WATERS 49 

tures, was dangerous ground. The Indians themselves 
could not occupy it^ for it had been for ages the com- 
mon battle-ground of opposing tribes. xA.ny savage 
met within its confines was sure to be on the war-path 
against any and all comers. He that entered took 
his life in his hand. 

''Thus the chances of success in any westward 
movement were in favor of New York and New 
England, and against Permisylvania. Yet it was the 
latter that did the work. Central and western New 
York remained a wilderness until Missouri was set- 
tling with Americans. New England took little or 
no part in Western affairs until, the West having been 
won, Massachusetts and Connecticut, calmly over- 
stepping New York and Pennsylvania, laid thrifty 
hand upon the public domain north of Pittsburg and 
west to the Mississippi. 

^^e have seen that the West was actually entered 
by the most difficult and hostile route, and this in 
spite of political and economic reasons for choosing 
a more northerly and easier line of advance. I do 
not remember that this has ever before been pointed 
out; but it is a fact of deep significance, for it de- 
termined what should be the temper of the great 
West, and what should be its course of development. 

"The wedge of settlement was driven through the 
heart of the Alleghanies because there dwelt at the 



50 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

foot of the moaintains a people more aggressive,, more 
daring, and more independent than the tidewater 
stock. This people acted on its own initiative, not 
only without government aid, but sometimes in de- 
fiance of government. It won to the American flag 
not only the central West, but the Northwest and 
Southwest as well; and it was, for the most part, 
the lineal descendants of these men that first, of 
Americans, explored the far West, and subdued it for 
future settlement. 

^^This explains why Missouri, rather than the north- 
ern tier of new states, became in its turn the vanguard 
and outpost of civilization, as Kentucky and Tennes- 
see had been before her, and Virginia and Pennsyl- 
vania before them. It explains why, when mountain 
and forest barriers had been left behind, and the vast 
Western plain offered countless parallel routes of 
travel to the Rockies, such routes were not used, but 
all the great transcontinental trails, whether to 
Santa Fe, California, or Oregon, focused for half 
a century at St. Louis or Independence. It explains 
why the majority of our famous scouts and explorers 
and Indian fighters were men whose strain went back 
to the Shenandoah valley or the Yadkin, and why 
most of them could trace their descent still farther 
back to Pennsylvania, mother of Western pioneers." 

There is much that is convincing in this study of 



THE PATHWAY OF THE WATERS 51 

facts and motives; yet perhaps the gentler and 
broader view is not that of personnel but of geo- 
graphy. I myself am more disposed to believe that 
St. Louis became great by reason of her situation 
on the great interior pathways of the waters ; though 
all this may be said with no jot of abatement in 
admiration for the magnificent daring and deter- 
mination of those men of the lower slopes of the 
Appalachians who, as history shows simply and un- 
mistakably, were really the pioneers of the eastern, 
the middle and the most western portions of the 
splendid empire of the West. Let us reserve for a 
later chapter the more specific study of this typical 
adventurer and hi,s origin, and pass for the present 
to the general consideration of the figure that we 
may call the American west-bound man. 

We must remember that there had been two or three 
full American generations to produce him, this man 
that first dared turn away from the seaboard and set 
his face toward the sinking of the sun, toward the 
dark and mysterious mountains and forests, which 
then encompassed the least remote land fairly to be 
called the West. Two generations had produced a 
man different from the Old-World type. Free air 
and good food had given him abundant brawn. He 
was tall, with Anak in hia frame. Little fat cloyed 



52 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

the free play of his muscles^, and there belonged 
to him the heritage of the courage that comes of good 
heart and lungs. He was a splendid man to have for 
an ancestor, this tall and florid athlete that never 
heard of athletics. His face was thin and aquiline, 
his look high and confident, his eye blue, his speech 
reserved. You may see this same man yet in those re- 
stricted parts of this country which remain fit to be 
called American. You may see him sometimes in the 
mountains of Tennessee, the brakes of Arkansas or 
Missouri, where the old strain has remained most 
pure. You might have seen him over all the West 
in the generation preceding our own. 

In time this early outbound man learned that there- 
were rivers that ran, not to the southwest and into 
the sea, but outward, beyond the mountains and to- 
ward the setting sun. The winding trails of the 
Alleghanies led one finally to rivers that ran to- 
ward Kentucky, Tennessee, even farther out into that 
unknown, tempting land which still was called the 
West. Thus it came that the American genius broke 
entirely away from salt-water traditions, asked no 
longer "WHiat cheer ?" from the ships that came from 
across the seas, clung no longer to the customs, the 
costumes, the precedents or standards of the past. 

There came the day of buckskin and woolsey, of 
xifle and ax, of men curious for adventures, of homes 



THE 'PATHWAT OF THE WATERS 53 

built of logs and slabs, \7itl1 punclieons for floors, 
with little fields about them, and tiny paths that led 
out into the immeasurable preserves of the primeval 
forests. A few things held intrinsic value at that 
time^ — powder, lead, salt, maize, cow-bells, women 
that dared. It was a simple but not an ill ancestry, 
this that turned away from the sea-coast forever and 
began the making of another world. It was the 
strong-limbed, the bold-hearted that traveled, the 
weak that stayed at home. 

Thus began the true x\merican aristocracy, the aris- 
tocracy of ability. The dashing Cavalier, your high- 
churchman from England, was not the first over the 
Appalachians. It was the Protestant, the Quaker, 
the dissenter, the independent who led the way into 
another world and into another order of things. 

Of this hardy folk who left home when yet there 
was no need of so doing, and who purposed never to 
come back from the land they were to discover, — types 
of that later proverb-making Western man who *^came 
to stay," — let us seek out one where there were many, 
some distant Phenician, some master of ways and 
means, some captain of his time. One man and one 
community may serve as typical of this epoch. 

In 1779 one James Eobertson, of the Watauga set- 
tlements of !N"orth Carolina, a steadfast man, heard 
certain voices that called him to the West, James 



54 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

Eobertson, the steadfast, forming his company for 
this uncertain, perilous enterprise, said: *'We are 
the advance guard of a civilization, and our way 
is across the continent." Simple words, — yet that 
was in 1779 ! 

Kow, for the building of this one town, the town 
that Is now the city of Nashville, and the capital 
of Tennessee, this leader had gathered three hun- 
dred and eighty persons, men, women, and cliildren. 
All the women and children, one hundred and thirty 
in number, in charge of a few men, went by boat, 
scow, pirogue, and canoe, in the winter-time, down 
the bold waters of the Holston and Tennessee rivers. 
The rest traveled as best they might over the five hun- 
dred miles of ^'^tra.ce^' across Kentucky. Of this 
whole party two hundred and twenty-six got through 
alive. 

The boat party had many hundreds of miles 
of unknown and dangerous waters to travel, and the 
journey took them three months, a time longer than 
it now requires to travel around the world. They 
ran thirty miles of rapids on the shoals of the Ten- 
nessee, pursued and fired upon by Cherokees. Of 
this division of the party only ninety-seven got 
through alive, and nine of these were wounded. One 
was drowned, one died of natural causes and was 
buried, and the rest were killed by the Indians, 



THE PATHWAY OF THE WATERS 55 

Their voyage was indeed ^'^with.out a parallel in mod- 
ern history." Among those who survived the hard- 
ships of the journey was Rachel Donelson, later tlie 
wife of Andrew Jackson. 

The path of empire in America, the path of corn 
and venison, was a highway that never ran hack- 
ward. These men would never leave this country now 
that they had taken it. But what a tax was this that 
the barbaric land demanded of them ! In November 
of 1780, less than a year after the party was first or- 
ganized, there were only one hundred and thirty-four 
persons left alive out of the original three hundred 
and eight}^, but in the settlement itself there had 
not been a natural death. The Indians killed these 
settlers, and the settlers killed the Indians. Death 
and wounds meant nothing to the adults. The very 
infants learned a stoic hardihood. Out of two hun- 
dred and fifty^six survivors, thirty-nine were killed 
in sixty days. Out of two hundred and seventeen 
survivors, the next season saw but one hundred and 
thirty-four left. 

The spring of 1781 found only seventy persons left 
alive. But when the vote was cast whether to stay 
or return, not one man voted to give up the fight. 
In that West com was worth one hundred and sixty- 
five dollars a bushel, and in its raising the rifle was 
as essential as the plow. Powder and lead were price- 



6e THE WAY TO THE WEST 

less. Man and woman togetlier, fearless^, cliangeless, 
they held the land, giving back not one inch of the 
west-bound distance they had gained ! 

In 1791 there were only fifteen persons left alive 
out of the three hundred and eighty that made this 
American migration. There had been only one nat- 
ural death among them. In such a settlement there 
was no such thing as a hero, because all were heroes. 
Each man was a master of weapons, and incapable of 
fear. No fiction ever painted a hero like to any one 
of these. One man, after having been shot and stab- 
bed many times, was scalped alive, and jested at it. 
A little girl was scalped alive, and lived to forget it. 
An army of Indians assaulted the settlement, and 
fifteen men and thirty women beat them off. Mrs. 
Sally Buchanan, a forgotten heroine, molded bullets 
all one night during an Indian attack, and on the 
next morning gave birth to a son. 

This was the ancestral fiber of the West. What 
time had folk like these for powder-puff or ruffle, for 
fan or jeweled snuff-box ? Their garb was made from 
the skin of the deer, the fox, the wolf. Their shoes 
were of hide, their beds were made of the robes of the 
bear and buffalo. They laid the land under tribute. 
Yet, so far from mere savagery was the spirit that 
animated these men that in ten years after they had 
first cut away the forest they were founding a college 



THE PATHWAY OF THE WATERS 57 

and establishing' a court of law. Read this forgotten 
history, one chapter and a little one, in the history of 
the West, and then turn, if you like, to the chapters 
of fiction in an older world. You have your choice 
of lace or elkskin. 



CHAPTEE VI 

THE MISSISSIPPI, AND INDEPENDENCE* 

Tliere was a gemeration of this down-stream 
transportation, and it bnilt up tbe first splendid, ag- 
gressive population of the West — a population that 
continued to edge farther outward and farther dowor 
stream. The settlement at Nashville, the settlements 
of Kentucky, were at touch with the Ohio Eiver, the 
broad highway that led easily down to the yet broader 
highway of tlie Mississippi, that great, mysterious 
stream so intimately connected with American his- 
tory and American progress. It was easy to get to 
New Orleans, but hard to get back over the Alle- 
ghanies. Therefore, out of the mere fact that water 
runs downhill, arose one of the earliest and most dan- 
gerous political problems this country ever knew. 

The riflemen of Sevier and Robertson saved Ten- 
nessee and Kentucky to the Union only that they 
might well-nigh be lost again to Spain. The In- 
dian fighters of the West knew little how the scales 
trembled in the balance for the weak young govern- 
ment of the United States of America, lately come 



*The Century Magazine; Continued. 
58 



MISSISSIPPI, INDEPENDENCE 59 

into place as an 'independent power. The authorities 
at Washington dared not be too firm with France or 
Spain, or even with England. Diplomacy juggled 
across seas, while the riflemen of the West fought for 
the opening of that Great River which meant every- 
thing for them. 

The league of Spain and the Cherokees kept up co- 
vert warfare against these early Westerners. The 
stark, stanch men of Robertson and Sevier hunted 
down the red fighters and killed them one by one 
over all the Western hunting-grounds and corn- 
grounds; and then they rebelled against Washing- 
ton, and were for setting up a world of their own. 
They sent in a petition, a veritable prayer from the 
wilderness, the first words of complaint ever wrung 
from those hardy men. 

"^e endured almost unconquerable difficulties in 
settling this Western country," they said, "in full 
confidence that we should be enabled to send our 
products to the market through the rivers that 
water the country; but we have the mortification not 
only to be excluded from that channel of commerce 
by a foreign nation, but the Indians are rendered 
more hostile through the influence of that nation." 

To add to the intricacy of this situation, now came 
one General James Wilkinson, late of a quasi-connec- 
tion with tlie Continental army, who early discovered 



60 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

the profit of the trade to the mouth of the Mississippi. 
Discovering, likewise, the discontent of the West, 
which was almost wholly dependent upon that river 
for its transportation, he conceived the pretty idea 
of handing over this land to Spain, believing that in 
the confusion consequent upon such change his own 
personal fortunes must necessarily be largely bettered. 
The archives show the double dealings of Wilkinson 
with Spain, Great Britain, and the United States. 
He played fast and loose with friend and foe, until at 
length he found his own level and met in part his 
juist deserts:. 

Meantime the stout little government at Wasliing- 
ton, knowing well enough all the dangers that 
threatened it, continued to work out the problems 
crowding upon it. Some breathless, trembling years 
passed b}^ — years full of wars and treaties in Europe 
as well as in America. Then came the end of 
all doubts and tremblings. The lying intrigues 
at the mouth of America's great roadway ceased by 
virtue of that purchase of territory which gave to 
America forever this mighty Mississippi, solemn, ma- 
jestic, and mysterious stream, peirpetiial highway, 
and henceforth to be included wholly within the bor- 
ders of the West. 

The acquisition of this territory was due not so 
Tomoh to Ameiican statesmanship or foresight as to 



MISSISSIPPI, INDEPENDENCE 61 

either the freakishness or wisdom of Napoleon Bona- 
parte, then much disturbed by the native revolts in 
the West Indies, and harassed by the impending war 
vfith England. Whether England or France would 
land troops at New Orleans was long a question. The 
year that saw the Mississippi made wholly American 
was one mighty in the history of America and of the 
world. 

The date of the Louisiana Purchase is significant 
not more in virtue of the vast domain added to the 
West than because of the fact that with this territory 
came the means of building it up and holding it to- 
gether. It was now that for the first time the 
solidarity of this New World was forever assured. 
We gained a million uninhabited miles — a million 
miles of country that will one day support its thou- 
sands to the mile. But still more important, we 
gained the right and the ability to travel into it and 
across it and through it. France had failed tO' build 
roads into that country, and thereafter neither France 
nor any other foreign power might ever do sO'. 

We who have the advantage of the retrospect un- 
derstand the Mississippi and its tributaries far bet- 
ter than did the statesmen of a hundred years ago. 
Indeed, it was then the belief of many of the ablest 
minds that we ought not to accept this Louisiana Pur- 
chase even as a gift. Josiah Adams, in discussing 



62 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

the bill for tlie admission of Louisiana as a state, 
said: ''^I am compelled to declare it as my deliber- 
ate opinion that if this bill passes, the bonds of this 
Union are virtually dissolved; that the states which 
compose it are free from their moral obligations; 
and that, as it will be the right of all, so it will be 
the duty of some, to prepare definitely for a separa- 
tion, amicably if they can, violently if they must." 

This from Massachusetts, later to be the home of 
abolition and of centralization ! It may sit ill with 
the sons of Massachusetts to reflect that their own 
state was the first one deliberately to propose seces- 
sion. Still more advanced was the attitude of 
James White, who painted the following dismal pic- 
ture of that West which was to be : 

"Louisiana must and will be settled if we hold it, 
and with the very population that would otherwise 
occupy part of our present territory. Thus our citi- 
zens will be removed to the immense distance of two 
or three thousand miles from the capital of the 
Union, where they will scarcely ever feel the rays 
of the general government; their affections will be- 
come alienated; they will gradually begin to view us 
as strangers; they will form other commercial con- 
nections, and our interests will become distinct. 
These, with other causes that human wisdom may 
not now foresee, will in time effect a separation, and 



MISSISSIPPI, INDEPENDENCE 63 

I fear our bourLcls will be fixed nearer to our houses 
than the waters of the Mississippi. We have al- 
ready territory enough, and when I contemplate the 
evils that may arise to these States from this intended 
incorporation of Louisiana into the Union, I would 
rather see it given to France, to Spain, or to any 
other nation of the earth, upon the mere condition 
that no citizen of the United States should ever set- 
tle within its limits, than to see the territory sold for 
a hundred million of dollars and we retain the sov- 
ereignty. . . . And I do say that, under existing 
circumstances, even supposing that this extent of 
territory was a valuable acquisition, fifteen million 
dollars was a most enormous sum to give." 

How feeble is our grasp upon the future may be 
seen from the last utterance. The sum of fifteen 
million dollars seemed "enormous." To-da}^, less than 
a century from that time, one American citizen has 
in his lifetime made from the raw resources of this 
land a fortune held to be two hundred and sixty-six 
million dollars. 

One Western city, located in that despised terri- 
tory, during the year just past showed sales of 
grain alone amounting to one hundred and twenty- 
three million three hundred thousand dollars; of 
live stock alone, two hundred and sixty-eight mil- 
lion dollars; of wholesale trade, seven hundred and 



64 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

eighty-six million two hundred and five thousand 
dollars; of manufactures — where manufactures were 
once held impossible — the total of seven hundred and 
forty-one million and ninety-seven thousand dollars. 

It was once four weeks from Maine to Washington ; 
it is now four days from Oregon. The total wealth 
of all the cities, all the lands, all the individuals of 
that once despised West, runs into figures that sur- 
pass all belief and all comprehension. And this has 
grown up within less than a hundred years. The 
people have outrun all the wisdom of their leaders. 
What would Daniel Webster, famous New Englander, 
doubter and discreditor of the West, say, were he to 
know the West to-day? 

Yet the men of that day were not so much to 
blame, for they were in the infancy of transporta- 
tion, and as no army is better than its commissary 
trains, so is no nation better than its transportation. 
We were still in the crude, primitive, down-stream 
days. Steam had not yet come upon the great in- 
terior waterways. The west-bound mountain roads 
across the Alleghanies were still only narrow tracks 
worn by the feet of pack-horses that carried mostly 
salt and bullets. The turnpikes fit for wagon traffic 
were Eastern affairs only. The National Eoad, from 
Wheeling to the westward, was restricted in its stag- 
ing possibilities. 



MISSISSIPPI, INDEPENDENCE 65 

Between the hardy Western' population and its 
earlier home there rose the high barrier of the Ap- 
palachians, to ascend whose streams meant a long, 
grievous and dangerous journey, a journey com- 
mercially impracticable. The first traffic of the 
old mountain road was in salt and bullets, and it 
was a traffic that all went one way. The diffi- 
culties of even this crude commerce led to the 
establishment, as the very first manufacture ever 
begun in the West, of works for the production of 
salt. Bullitt's Lick, on Salt Creek, was one of the 
earliest, if not the earliest, manufacturing commu- 
nity west of the Alleghanies, and part of the down- 
stream trade of the day was in carrying kettles from 
Louisville down the Ohio and up Salt Creek to the 
lick. This route was in hostile Indian country, and 
every voyage held its own terrors. 

We may note, then, the beginning of the commer- 
cial West in the local necessities of that West. 
For the first west-bound generation the prob- 
lem of transportation had been largely a personal 
one. The first adventurers, with little baggage but 
the rifle and the ax, able to live on parched corn and 
jerked venison, with women almost as hardy as men, 
neither possessed nor cared for the surplus things 
of life. They subsisted on what nature gave them, 



ee THE WAY TO THE WEST 

seeking but little to add to the productiveness of na- 
ture in any way. 

But now we must, presently, conceive of our 
AVestern man as already shorn of a trifle of his 
fringes. His dress was not now so near a par- 
allel to that of the savage whom he had overcome. 
There was falling into his mien somewhat more of 
staidness and sohriety. This man had so used the 
ax that he had a farm, and on this farm he raised 
more than he himself could use — first step in the 
great future of the West as storehouse for the world. 
This extra produce could certainly not be taken back 
over the i^lleghanies, nor could it be traded on the 
spot for aught else than merely similar commodities. 

Here, then, was a turning-point in Western his- 
tory. There is no need to assign to it an exact date. 
We have the pleasant fashion of learning history 
through dates of battles and assassinations. We 
might do better in some cases did we learn the time 
of certain great and significant happenings. 

It was an important time when this first Western 
farmer, somewhat shorn of fringe, sought to find 
market for his crude produce, and found that the 
pack-horse would not serve him so well as the broad- 
horned flat-boat that supplanted his canoe. The 
flat-boat ran altogether down-stream. Hence it led 
altogether away from home and from the East. The 



MISSISSIPPI, INDEPENDENCE 67 

Western man was relying upon himself, cutting loose 
from traditions, asking help of no man; sacrificing, 
perhaps, a little of sentiment, but doing so out of 
necessity, and only because of the one great fact that 
the waters would not run back uphill, would not 
carry him back to the East that was once his home. 

So the homes and the graves in the West grew, and 
there arose a civilization distinct and different from 
that which kept hold upon the sea and upon the 
Old World. The Westerner had forgotten the oys- 
ters and shad, the duck and terrapin of the seaboard. 
He still lived on venison and corn, the best portable 
food ever known for hard marching and hard work. 
The more dainty Easterners, the timid ones, the stay- 
at-homes, said that this new man of the Western ter- 
ritory was a creature ^^alf horse and half alligator." 
It were perhaps more just to accord to him a certain 
manhood, either then or now. He prevailed, he con- 
quered, he survived, and therefore he was right. 
There grew the aristocracy of ability. 

The government at Washington saw this growing 
up of a separate kingdom, and sought to shorten 
the arc of this common but far-reaching sky; it 
sought to mitigate the swiftness of these streams, to 
soften the steepness of these eternal hills. Witness 
Washington's forgotten canal from the headwaters 
of the James Eiver^ — a canal whose beginning or 



68 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

end would puzzle the average American of to-day 
to define without special study. Witness many other 
canal and turnpike schemes, feeble efforts at the 
solution of the one imperishable problem of a 
land vast in its geography. 

Prior to the Louisiana Purchase no man could 
think of a civilization west of the Mississippi; but 
there were certain weak attempts made by the govern- 
ment to bind to itself that part of the new lands 
that lay in the eastern half of the Mississippi valley. 
The ^''Ordinance of the Northwest/' done by the hand 
of Thomas Jefferson himself, makes interesting read- 
ing to-day. This ordinance sought to establish a 
number of states in the great valley "as soon as the 
lands should have been purchased from the Indians." 

It was proposed that each state should comprehend, 
from north to south, ^^two degrees of latitude, 
beginning to count from the completion of thirty- 
one degrees north of the equator, but any state north- 
wardly of the forty-seventh degree shall make part of 
that state next below ; and eastwardly and westwardly 
they shall be bounded, those on the Mississippi by that 
river on one side, and the meridian of the lowest 
point on the rapids of the Ohio on the other; those 
adjoining on the east by the same meridian on their 
western side, and on their eastern by the meridian 
of the western cape of the mouth of the Great 



MISSISSIPPI, INDEPENDENCE 69 

Kanawha; and the territory eastward of this last 
meridian between the Ohio, Lake Erie, and Penn- 
sylvania shall be one state." 

The Ordinance even went so far as to propose 
names for these future states, and quaint enough 
were some of the names suggested for those that 
are now Illinois, Ohio, Indiana., Michigan. 
^^Sylvania," "Cherronesus," '^Asenesipia," "Metro- 
patamia," "Pelesipia" — these are names of Western 
states that never were born, and in this there is 
proof enough of the fact that, though the govern- 
ment at Washington had its eye on the West, it 
had established no control over the West, and under 
the existing nature of things had no right ever to 
expect such control. As a matter of fact, the gov- 
ernment never did catch this truant province until 
the latter, in its own good time, saw fit to come 
back home. This was after the West had solved its 
own problems of commercial intercourse. 

It may now prove of interest to take a glance 
at the crude geography of this Western land at that 
time when it first began to produce a surplus, and 
the time when it had permanently set its face away 
from the land east of the Alleghanies. The census 
map (see Map No. 1) will prove of the best service, 
and its little blotches of color will tell much in brief 
regarding the West of 1800, 



70 THE WAY TO THE AYEST 

For forty years before this time tlie fur trade had 
had its depot at the city of St. Louis. For a hundred 
years there had been a settlement on the Great Lakes. 
For nearly a hundred years the town of New Orleans 
had been established. Here and thcre^ between these 
foci of adventurers, there were odd, seemingly unac- 
countable little dots and specks of population scat- 
tered over all the map, product of that first uncertain 
hundred years. Ohio, directly west of the original 
Pennsylvania hotbed, was left blank for a long time, 
and indeed received her first population from the 
southward, and not from the East, though the New 
Englander, Moses Cleveland, founded the town of 
Cleveland as early as 1796. 

Lower down in the great valley of the Mississippi 
was a curious, illogical, and now forgotten little band 
of settlers who had formed what was know^n as the 
^^Mississippi Territory." Smaller yet, and more inex- 
plicable, did we not know the story of the old water- 
trail from Green Bay to the Mississippi, there was a 
dot, a smear, a tiny speck of population high up on 
the east bank of the Mississippi, where the Wisconsin 
emptied. 

These valley settlements far outnumbered all the 
population of the state of Ohio, which had lain 
directly in the latitudinal path of the star. The 
West was beginning to be tlie West, The seed sown 



MISSISSIPPI, INDEPENDENCE 71 

by Marquette the Good, by HeiinepirL tlie Bad, by 
La Salle the Bold, by T'onty the Faithful, seed cul- 
tivated by Boone and Kentou, by Sevier and Robert- 
son and scores and hundreds of stalwart early Wes- 
terners — seed despised by an ancient and corrupt 
monarchy — had now begun to grow. 

Yet, beyond the farthest settlements of the West of 
that day, there w^as still a land so great that no one 
tried to measure it, or sought to include it in tlie 
plans of family or nation. It was all a matter for 
the future, for generations much later. Compared 
with the movements of the past, it must be cen- 
turies before the West — whatever that term might 
mean — could ever be overrun. That it could ever 
be exhausted was, to be sure, an utterly unthinkable 
thing. 

There were vague stories among the hardy settlers 
about new lands incredibly distant, mythically rich 
in interest. But who dreamed the import of the 
journey of strong-legged Zebulon Pike inta the 
lands of the Sioux, and who believed all his story 
of a march from Santa Fe to Chihuahua, and thence 
back to the Sabine? What enthusiasm was aroused 
for the peaceful settler of the Middle West, whose 
neighbor was fifty miles away, by that ancient saga, 
that heroically done, Homerically misspelled story 
of Lewis and Clark? There was still to be room 



72 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

enougli and chaiice enougli in the. West for any and 
all men. 

The progress of civilization, accelerated with the 
passing of each century, was none the less slow at 
this epoch. There was an ictus here in the pilgrim- 
age of humanity. It was as though the Fates wished 
that for a brief time the world might see the spec- 
tacle of a land of help and hope, of personal initiative 
and personal ambition. The slow-moving star of the 
West trembled and quivered with a new and un- 
known light, caught from these noble lakes and 
rivers, reflected from these mountains and these 
skies. 

The stars of a new heaven looked down on another 
king, a king in linsey-woolsey. France kicked 
him forth a peasant, and, born again, he scorned 
the petty limitations of her seigniories, and stood 
on her rejected empire, the emperor of himself. 
England rotted him in her mines and ditches, but 
before the reversed flags of England were borne 
home from her war which did not subjugate, this 
same man, under another sky, was offering hospi- 
tality, and not obeisance, to her belted earls. 



CHAPTER VII 

ORIGIN OF THE PIONEER 

^^If we call the roll of American scouts, explorers, 
trappers, Indian fighters of the Far West; of men 
like John Colter, Eobert McClellan, John Day, Jim 
Bridger, Bill Williams, Joe Meek, Kit Carson and 
their ilk, who trapped and fought over every nook 
and cranny of the Far West, from the Canadian 
divide to the 'starving Gila,' we shall find that most 
of them were of the old Shenandoah-Kentucky 
stock that made the first devious trail from Penn- 
sylvania along and across the Applachians." 

This statement of a well-advised writer is curious 

and interesting to any student of the real West. It 

applies, also, of course, and much more closely, to 

those earlier pioneers that explored the first West, 

that of the Mississippi valley; the Boones, Kentons, 

Harrods, Finleys, Bryans, Stuarts and hundreds of 

others of the fighting breed of Virginia and North 

Carolina, the families of nearly all of whom had 

made one or more pilgrimages to the south or even 

to the southeastward before the great trek westward 

over the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies. 

73 



n THE WAY TO THE WEST 

America owes much of her national character and 
a vast 23art of her national territory to the individual 
initiative of these bold souls^ who waited for no poli- 
cies, no purchases, no leaderships, but pressed on, rifle 
and ax at hand, to find and hold our West for us. To- 
day we forget these men. The names of the captains 
of enterprise are lost in the tawdry modern lists of 
our so-called captains of industry. To-day, in a time 
that is fast becoming one of American serfdom, 
we lose in the haze of a national carelessness the 
figures of that earlier and more glorious day when 
the magnificent American West offered free scope 
and opportunity to a population wholly made up of 
men of daring, of individuality, of initiative, of self- 
leadership. 

That was the day of the founding of the Amer- 
ican aristocracy, of the birth of the American type, 
of the beginning of the American character. If 
we would study an actual American history, we 
can not leave out the American pioneer; and be- 
fore, in; our humble effort to approach the real 
genius of our America, we follow the strong sweep 
of the west-bound beyond the mighty Mississippi 
and toward the western sea,, we shall do best to pause 
for a space and to make some inquiry into the origin 
and character of these early apostles of tlie creed 
of adventure. 



OEIGIISr OF THE PIONEER 75 

If we ask chapter and verse in the study of the 
origin of this American frontiersman, this pioneer 
whose ambition was an indisputable personal inde- 
pendence, we shall not find the details of liis an- 
cestry among the records of wealthy and aristocratic 
dwellers of the seaboard region. The bone and 
brawn of the early frontier did not come from the 
Cavaliers, properly so-called; though it were doing 
the Cavaliers^ the aristocrats, an injustice to say 
that they were deaf to the summons of adventure. 

The man that dared life and fortune in moving to 
America would dare life and fortune west of the 
AUeghanies; and the history of many a colony and 
land grant in the early West is proof enough of 
this. The Cavalier or aristocrat, however, was- not 
our typical axman or rifleman. The man of accom- 
plished fortune, of stable social cormeotions, dwelt 
farther back in that East that ofi:ered the most 
settled society of the American continent. The man 
in linsey-woolsey, the woodsman, the rifleman, was 
the man at the front, and it is in regard to his 
origin that we may profitably be somewhat curious. 
We shall, therefore, for a, time be more concerned 
with the mountains of Pennsylvania than with the 
shores of Chesapeake Bay or the rich valleys of Mary- 
land and the Old Dominion. 

A student of the history of the early settlement 



76 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

of Pennsylvania* furnishes data regarding the two 
great stems of the pioneer ;f tock, the Quaker and 
the Scotch-Irish, which were most prominent among 
the many nationalities that flocked to the kindly 
kingdom of Williaon Penn, where each man was 
treated as a man, and where independence in thought 
and action was the portion each claimed as his own. 

'^n the first half of the eighteenth century/' says 
this writer, '^^many thousands of Scotch-Irish, Ger- 
mans and Welish landed at Philadelphia and New 
Castle, and a large majority of them found homes 
in Pennsylvania. A number of the former turned 
to the westward from New Castle and established 
themselves in Maryland and Virginia. Among 
them were the ancestors of Meriwether Lewis, whose 
grandfather was born in Ulster, Ireland; and a 
number of other noted pathfinders of the West. 

"A few isolated settlements were also formed in 
New Jersey and Delaware, but as before stated, the 
majority of them found homes in Pennsylvania. They 
swarmed up the valleys of the Delaware, Schuylkill 
and Susquehanna and their tributaries, and became 
at once the vanguard of frontier settlement; and they 
and their progeny continued to merit this distinc- 
tion until the descendants of the Atlantic seaboard 



*Wwren S. Ely, of Doylestown, Pa. 



OmGIN OF THE PIONEER 77 

settleinent& looked down from the summit of the 
Rockies on the Pacific slope. 

"In the last half of the eighteenth century many 
hundreds of families migrated from Pennsylvania 
southward into the valleys of the Shenandoah and 
the south branch of the Potomac, whence numbers 
of them continued their journey into North and 
South Carolina. The records of the Society of 
Eriends in Bucks, Lancaster and Chester counties 
show that hundreds of certificates of removal were 
granted their members during this period, to remove 
to Virginia and the Carolinas; and many of these 
sturdy Quakers eventually found homes west of the 
Alleghanies, though not a few of them, like Daniel 
Boone, the great king of frontiersmen, found the 
exigencies of life on the frontier incompatible with 
peace principles, one of the cardinal tenets of their 
faith, and drifted out of the Society. 

"During the same period hordes of people of other 
religious denominations removed from Pennsylvania 
over the same route. ^The counties of x\ugusta and 
Rockingham, in Virginia, were settled almost ex- 
clusively by Pennsylvanians from Bucks and Berks 
and the Cumberland valley, many of whom found 
homes farther west or left their bones to bleach in the 
eaYage-tenanted wilderness of the frontier. 

'TBoone himself was a native of Berks County and 



78 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

removed in 17-50^ when a lad of sixteen, with his fam- 
ily and a host of others, among whom were the 
Hankses, Hentons, Lincolns and man}' others whose 
names became familiar in the drama of the West, first 
to Virginia and later to North Carolina. William.' 
Stewart, a companion of Boone in Kentucky who 
was killed at Blue Licks, in 1785, was a native of 
Bucks County, and, it is claimed by relatives of both 
Boone and Stewart, was also a schoolmate of Boone's. 

'^If this be true, it must have been in Virginia, as 
Boone never lived in Bucks County, though his 
father was a resident of New Britain township prior 
to the birth of Daniel. Soon after the death of 
Stewart, his sister, Hannah Harris, of Newtown, 
made an overland trip from Newtown, Bucks County, 
to Danville, Kentucky, to look after the estate be- 
queathed by Stewart to liis sisters, Mary Hunter 
and Hannah Harris of Bucks County, and after her 
return made a report of the cost of the trip, which 
is on record at Doylestown. 

"The power of attorney of Mary Hunter to Han- 
nah Harris to proceed to ^Kaintuckee' to collect her 
share of the Estate of William Stewart is dated 
May seventh, 1787; and the power of attorney given 
by Hannah Harris to John Dormer Murray to trans- 
act her business in Bucks County, dated July twenty- 
fifth, 1787, states that she is ^about setting out for 



ORIGIN OF THE PIONEER -yo 

^Kaintuckee' and therefore fixes approximately tlie 
date of the beginning of her journey. 

"Dr. Hugh Shiells, of Philadelphia, who had mar- 
ried Ann, the daughter of Hannah Harris, May thir- 
tieth, 1782, preceded her to Kentucky and took up his 
residence near Frankfort. He died in 1785, leaving 
an infant daughter Kitty, who on arriving at woman- 
hood married Thomas Bodley, one of the trustees 
of Transylvania University. 

''^Archibald Finley, who, we believe, was the emi- 
grant ancestor' of the John Finley who led an 
exploring party into southern Kentucky from North 
Carolina in 1767, died in New Britain township, 
Bucks County, in March, 1749, leaving at least 
three sons, Henry, John and Alexander, of whom the 
two former removed to Virginia and later to Ken- 
tucky. They are believfed to have been members of a 
party of a score or more families wlio left Bucks 
County about 1760 and journeyed to Loudoun Coun- 
ty, Virginia, whence a number of them removed soon 
after to Orange County, North Carolina. Of this 
party were Robert Jamison and his family and the 
Fergusons of Plumstead. 

^^illiam, James and Morgan Bryan, brothers-in- 
law of Daniel Boone, who accompanied him from 
North Carolina to Kentucky, were also natives of 
Pennsylvania. They were the sons of Morgan Bryan, 



♦^'0 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

who came from Ireland prior to 1719, at which date 
his name appears on the tax list of Birmingham 
township, Chester County, as a *^single man/ He mar- 
ried the following year Martha Strode, and in the 
year 1734 with fifteen others obtained a grant of a 
large tract of land on the Opeekon and Potomac 
rivers near Winchester, Virginia, and removed there- 
on. From this point he removed with his family to 
the Yadkin, where Daniel Boone met and married his 
daughter, Rebecca, in 1755. 

'^There is an abundance of documentary evidence 
in Bucks County and in possession of her sons else- 
where, showing that many of the pioneers of Ken- 
tucky were natives of Bucks. The ^ills of many 
Bucks-countians devise estates to brothers, sisters, 
sons and daughters, ^now or late of Virginia,' or ^iji 
the county called Kaintuckee, Province of Virginia.' 

"Eev. J. W. Wallace, of Independence, Missouri, 
has in his possession an old account book and diary 
combined, kept by his great-grandfather, John Wal- 
lace, who was born in Warrington, Bucks County, in 
1748, and who served with distinction as a lieutenant 
in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary 
War, some of the entries having been made in this 
book wliile the owner was in camp with Washington 
at Valley Forge in the dark winter of 1777-8. Lieu- 
tenant John Wallace married into the Finley family 



ORIGIN OF THE PIONEER 81 

and joining them in Loudoun County, removed with 
them into Kentucky in 1788. 

^^This remarkable book contains the record of the 
birth of John Wallace and his eight brothers and sis- 
ters, several of whom accompanied him to Ken- 
tucky, as well as an account of the journey of the em- 
igrants from Virginia to Kentucky, which was made 
in wagons from Loudoun County to the Ohio River ; 
from which point a portion of the party went in boats 
down the Ohio River to Limestone, now Maysville, 
then overland to Frankfort, while the remainder 
crossed over the mountains on pack-horses. They 
had doubtless been preceded by their relative, John 
Finley, of North Carolina. 

"A similar book is in possession of W. W. Flack, 
of Davenport, Iowa, the great-great-grandson of the 
first owner. On the fly leaf is endorsed the follow- 
ing: 'Receipt Book of William Flack, May 20, 1789.' 
This William Flack was born in Buckingham 
townsliip, Bucks County, on May eleventh, 1746, and 
died at Crab Orchard, Lincoln County, Kentucky, in 
1824. He was a son of James and Ann (Baxter) 
Flack, Scotch-Irish emigrants who came to Bucks 
County about 1730 and settled near Bushington. 
William Flack was captain of the Buckingham 
company of militia during the Revolution, and is 
said to have been in active service at the battle of 



82 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

Brandywine and at other jDoints. After the close of 
the war^ accompanied by his brother Benjamin and 
a nephew of the same name, he removed to Kentucky, 
by way of Virginia. 

^^One of the memoranda in the old book is as fol- 
lows: ^Benjamin Flack was killed by the Indians 
at the Month of Salt Eiver the 1st Day of March 
1786/ William Flack married Susannah Callison 
in Kentucky, March twenty-first, 1797, and the 
^Eeceipt Book' records that event and the births of 
their six children, two of whom died in infancy. On 
hearing of the death of his father, which occurred 
September second, 1802, Captain Flack started for 
Bucks County, and it is related that his long absence 
on this tedious journey led his family to believe that 
he had been captured by the Indians. 

^^While these Pennsylvanians were wending their 
way southward, their brethren in the Cumberland 
and Juniata valleys, augmented by recruits from 
settlements farther east, were pushing their way 
westward intO' Fayette, Washington and Westmore- 
land comities, whence they migrated to Kentucky 
and the Northwest Territory."* 



*The Pennsylvania historian might also have given us some 
word of that Col. George Morgan, some of whose descendants 
reside even now at Morganza, in Pennsylvania. Col. George 
Morgan had passed westward over the Alleghanies some years 
in advance of Daniel Boone's first visit to Kentucky. Mr. 
James Morris Morgan, of Washington, D. C, in correspondence 



OEIGIN" OF THE PIOXEER 83 

As to that war-like breed, the Scotch-Irish, famous 
in American frontiering, the same historian first 
quoted goes on in detailed description from which 
we may take the following : 

"History has touched lightly upon the home life 
of the little colony of Ulster Scots, who settled on 
the banks of the JSTeshaminy in the townships of 
Warwick, Warrington and Xew Britain, in Bucks 
County, Pa. ; but these people were none the less 
worthy of a prominent place in the records of the 

has this to say in regard to certain early voyagings of his ances- 
tor, which were undertaken while the Quakers of Pennsylvania 
were still quietly dropping down from the hills of Pennsylvania 
irto the eastern portions of Virginia and the Carolinas: 

"Col. George Morgan embarked at the village of Kaskaskia, 
on the Kaskaskia River, for his voyage down the Mississippi on 
the 21st of November, 1766. Butler, in his history of Kentucky, 
gives the credit of being the first American citizen to descend the 
Mississippi to Col. Taylor, in 17G9. Col. Morgan was the first 
American citizen to found a colony in the Territory of Louisiana. 
Under a grant of King Carlos IV, he built the city of New Mad- 
rid, March, 1789. The grant embraced some 15,000,000 acres of 
land. (Gayarre; 'History of Louisiana.') On June 20, 1788, Con- 
gress ordered the annulment of Col. Morgan's Indian claim to a 
greater portion of the state of Illinois, 'claiming the land bor- 
dering on the Mississippi, from the mouth of the Ohio to a de- 
termined station on the Mississippi that shall be sixty or eighty 
miles north from the mouth of the Illinois River, and extending 
from the Mississippi as far eastward as may.' The treaty meeting 
held under the auspices of Sir William Johnson at Fort Stanwix, 
•when the Indians deeded the territory of Indiana to George Mor- 
gan, his father-in-law John Boynton, and his partner Samuel 
Wharton, (Boynton, Wharton & Morgan) and several other 
minor traders whose goods had been despoiled, was held on No- 
vember 3, 1768. The state of Virginia claimed the territory after 
the Revolutionary War, and bullied the national government 
into compliance with her claims, the United States accepting the 
property as a present from Virginia, immediately after decid- 
ing in her favor. (See Journal of Congress, 1784, Feb. 26.)" 



84 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

past. Driven by religious persecution from iheii 
native Highlands in the seventeenth century, the 
remnants of many a noble clan sought temporary 
refuge in the province of Ulsterj Ireland, whence, 
between the years 1720 and 1740, thousands of them 
migrated to America, and peopled the hills and val- 
leys of Pennsylvania's frontier with a sturdy, rugged 
race that was destined to play an important part in 
the formation of our national character. 

'^^Clannish by nature and tradition, they clung 
together in small communities of two score or more 
families, a majority of them related by ties of blood 
or marriage. They took up the unsettled portions 
of the new province. Accustomed for generations to 
the rugged mountain sides of their own native land, 
the roughness of the new territory did not discourage 
them. In fact, the steep hillsides on the banks of 
our rivers and smaller streams, shunned or neglected 
by the early English settlers, seem to have had an 
especial attraction for them. 

"Possessed of a character as stern and uncom- 
promising as the granite of their native mountains, 
this little colony did not concern itself in the affairs 
of its neighbors. Indeed there was no occasion to 
do so. They had brought with them the things they 
needed, and had inherent in their nature that which 
made them a people separate and apart from the 



ORIGIN OF THE PIONEER 85 

communities by whicli tliey were surrounded. In 
their lives and characters was a declaration of inde- 
pendence that in itself nourished the spirit of free- 
dom, which was to carry these people into the thick 
of the fight when the time arrived to bid defiance to 
the mother country. 

'^'^This spirit was further augmented by their inde- 
pendence and resources in the development of the ma- 
terial affairs of the colony. As previously stated, there 
were among the first settlers men of every trade and 
calling calculated to make the colony self-sustaining. 
There were husbandmen, weavers, smiths, masons, 
joiners, cord-wainers, millers and tradesmen, whose 
industry and thrift made it possible for the school- 
master and preacher to devote himself exclusively 
to the intellectual and spiritual needs of the com- 
munity. But with true Scotch economy, the teacher 
and preacher were often one and the same. As an 
illustration may be cited the founding of Tennent's 
famous Log College as an adjunct to the Neshaminy 
Church, of which he was pastor. 

"The stimulus given to civil and religious freedom 
by the uninterrupted exercise of these liberties, in 
strong contrast to the repression and persecution in 
the old country, cannot be overestimated. Princeton, 
as well as like institutions elsewhere, had its incep- 
tion in our own Log College; and Finley, its first 



86 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

president, was akin to those of the same name in 
Warrington. 

^^The sons of Bucks County's sturdy pioneers were 
constantly pushing on beyond our frontiers, carry- 
ing with them the lessons of frugality, piety and 
independence learned in this primitive community. 
They formed new colonies and engendered therein 
the love of freedom, which, when the Eevolutionary 
War broke out, easily made the Scotch-Irish element 
the dominant party in the struggle for national 
independence in our state. Independence accom- 
plished, they returned to their homes and again 
took up the business of self-government, broadened 
and refined by contact with the outside world, the 
primitive characteristics of their early life gone, 
but retaining the independence and courage of their 
forebears which had developed in them the best ele- 
ments of citizenship." 



CHAPTER VIII 

DANIEL BOONE 

In preceding chapters we have taken up in gen- 
eral and in particular the origin, tlie purpose and 
the progress of the early American frontiersman. 
We have seen how this man, impelled by one reason 
or another, began to push outward on his way 
over the ^Appalachian range into the valley of the 
Mississippi. We have seen that the course of west- 
bound civilization was at first not wholly along the 
easiest way, but over barriers that had apparently 
been established by nature as insurmountable. 

From headwater to headwater, among these rugged 
hills, from one valley into anotlier, ever and ever west- 
ward, the early xVmerican had won his way, until 
lie struck the waters running into the lower Gulf 
by way of that great highway of the interior floods, 
the Mississippi River. We have seen that for a space 
the early population did not head directly westward, 
but dropped down from Pennsvlvania into Maryland 
and Virginia, and from Maryland and Virginia into 
(he Carolinas. 
Many of the early adventurers seem to have made 

a? 



88 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

their halting and rallying ground in North Caro- 
lina. Here were some of the men of Watauga, 
men who were to people Tennessee, men who were 
to discover and settle the grand state of Kentucky, 
that steadfast portion of our Western empire whose 
fidelity was to thwart all of those early efforts at 
Western sedition and secession that once threatened 
the unity of the American people. 

Having thus dealt in generalizations, we shall 
perhaps now do well to study some type, some prod- 
uct, of this early civilization, some character that 
■shall indicate the general characteristics of the land 
and people 'of that early time. In this desire we fall 
naturally on the rom^antic yet pertinent story of that 
typical and historical frontiersman, Daniel Boone. 

Among the great sayings of great men there is one 
that rings like a trumpet voice through all the 
press of years. "Here stand I," said Martin Luther. 
"Here I stand. I can not otherwise. God help me !" 
If we should come to comparisons, we might perhaps 
icall Daniel Boone the Luther of frontiering, the 
evangel of adventure, the prophet of early west- 
bound daring. Certainly he was the most forward, 
the most present, the most instant man of his place 
and time. 

If we endeavor to see Daniel Boone, the man, as 
he actually was, we find ourselves at the outset deal- 



DANIEL BOONE 89 

ing with a character already approaching the myth- 
ical in quality. Thus, in regard to his personality, 
certain folk imagine him as tall, thin, angular, un- 
couth. Others will portray to you a man with voice 
like thunder in the hills, with gore ever in his eye, 
in his voice perpetually the breathings of insatiate 
hate and rage. They will insist that Boone was 
bloody minded, overbearing, a man delighting in 
slaughters and riotings. Such pictures are utterly 
wrong; so much we may discover to be absolutely 
6ure from the scant record of Boone's real life. 

He was Quaker-bred, as we have seen. A sweeter 
soul than his we shall not find though we search all 
the pages of history. Meeting every species of dan- 
ger, he remained undaunted. Meeting every manner 
of adversity, he remained unsoured. With every rea- 
son for conceit, he remained unbitten of any personal 
vanity. To the end of his life it was his belief that 
he was '"'^an instrument ordained by Providence to 
settle the wilderness ;" yet he lost no time in posing 
himself in any supposititious sainthood. Nor must 
we imagine him crude or ignorant in his simplicity, 
for those who knew him best state that he was ^^a 
man of ambition, shrewdness and energy, as well as 
of fine social qualities and an extreme sagacity." 

He was learned in the knowledge useful at his time, 
although of books he wist not at all. Deeply re- 



90 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

ligious in the true sense of religion, a worshiper of 
the Great Maker as evidenced in His works, he was 
not a church member. There was no vaunting in 
his soul of his own righteousness; yet never was he 
irritable even in old age, when the blood grows cold, 
and the thwarted ambitions come trooping home to 
roost in the lives of most of us. "God gave me a 
work to perform," said he, '^^nd I have done my 
best." With this feeling he lived and died content. 

Regarding the Boone of early years, we find it 
difficult to frame a clear picture, but there is more 
information obtainable regarding his later life, and 
we can see him then clearly. A man reaching the 
ripe age of eighty-six, with five generations of his 
family living at the same time ; a man snowy haired, 
yet still of ruddy complexion, of frame still unbent, 
with kindly and gentle personal habits — this is the 
real Daniel Boone : no swearer of oaths, no swash- 
buckler, no roisterer, but a self-respecting, fearless 
gentleman, steadfast, immovable from his fixed pur- 
pose, inalienable from the mission which he con- 
ceived to be his own. 

A writer who knew him late in life says that on 
his introduction to Colonel Boone his impressions 
were those of "surprise, admiration and delight." 
In boyhood he had read of Daniel Boone, the 
pioneer of Kentucky, the celebrated hunter an^ 



DANIEL BOONE 91 

Indian fighter, and in imagination lie portrayed 
a ^^rough, uncouth looking specimen of hu- 
manity, and, of course, at this period of life, 
an irritable and intractable old man. But in every 
respect," says this biographer, "the reverse appeared. 
His high bold forehead was slightly bald, and his 
silver locks were combed smooth. His countenance 
was ruddy and fair, and exhibited the simplicity of 
a child. His voice was soft and melodious, and a 
smile frequently played over his face in conversation. 
His clothing was of the plain, coarse manufacture of 
the family. Everything about him indicated that 
kind of comfort that was congenial to his habits 
and feelings, and he evinced a happy old age. Boone 
was a fair specimen of the better class of Western 
pioneers, honest of heart and liberal — in short, one 
of nature's noblemen. He abhorred a mean action 
and delighted in honesty and truth. He never de- 
lighted in the shedding of human blood, even that 
of his enemies in war. His remarkable quality was 
an unwavering and invincible fortitude." 

As to personal description, Boone was neither a 
tall nor a thin man. He was not angular nor bony. 
His frame was covered not with cloying fat but with 
firm and easily playing muscles, and he carried none 
of the useless tissue of the man of civilization. 
'His weight was "about one hundred and seventy- 



92 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

five pounds.'^ Audubon, who met him late in his 
life, says: 'T3e approached the gigantic in stature. 
His chest was broad and prominent, and his 
muscular powers were visible in every limb. His 
countenance gave indication of his great courage, 
enterprise and perseverance/' 

Yet in person Boone did not quite reach the six- 
foot mark, but was just below five feet and ten inches 
in stature, some say five feet eight inches, being 
therefore of exactly that build which good 
judges of men esteem to be most desirable for com- 
bined strength, activity and endurance. He was 
rather broad shouldered : that is to say, his shoulders 
nicely overhung his hips. All agree that he was of 
"robust and powerful proportions." One historian 
speaks of his "piercing hazel eye^'; yet this is but 
romancing. 

Most portraits of Daniel Boone are the products of 
imagination. The most authentic, perhaps the only 
authentic portrait of him, is that painted in 1820 by 
Chester Harding, "who," says an early writer, "of 
American artists is the one most celebrated for 
his likenesses." When Harding made his portrait of 
Boone, the latter was very feeble, and had to be 
supported during the sittings. This portrait shows 
a face thin and pale, with hair of snowy whiteness 
and eye "bright blue, mild and pleasant." This blue 



DANIEL BOONE 93 

e3'e is of tlie best color in all the world for keenness of 
vision, for quickness and accuracy with the rifle. The 
Harding portrait does not show the square chin that 
some writers give to Boone; and certainly it por- 
trays no ferocious looking ruffian, but a man mild, 
gentle and contemplative, "not frivolous, thoughtless 
or agitated/' 

As to Boone's appearance early in life, we must 
to some extent join the others who imagine or pre- 
sume. It is fair to suppose that in complexion he 
was florid, with the clear skin, sometimes marked 
with freckles, that you may see to-day in the moun- 
tains of the Cumberland, in parts of Tennessee, Ken- 
tucky, sometimes in North Carolina and Mississippi. 
The color of his hair was never that of "raven 
blackness." Perhaps it was brown, but not a finely 
filamented brown. It was more likely blond, and 
perhaps indeed carried a shade of red. Certainly the 
ends of his hair were bleached a tawny yellow, that 
splendid yellow that you may see even to-day in the 
hair and beard and mustaches of the outdoor men 
of the American West. 

In his younger days he often wore the half savage 
garb of the early American hunters — the buckskin 
or linsey hunting shirt, the fringed leggings of the 
same material, with moccasins made of the skin of 



94 THE Wx\Y TO THE WEST 

the deer or buffalo. His hat was as chanee would 
have it. Perhaps sometimes he wore a cap of fur. 

His weaponry we may know exactly, for his rifle 
can he seen to-day, preserved by his descendants. 
It is the typical long-barreled, crooked-stocked, 
small-bore American rifle, mtli the wooden stock 
or fore end extending along the full length of 
the barrel. There are a few rude attempts at 
ornamentation on this historic arm. The sights 
lie close to the barrel, after the fashion of those 
deadly ancient weapons. The wood is rotting 
a little bit where the oil of long-ago cleaning 
operations has touched it. Perhaps the spring 
of the lock is a trifle weak. Yet we may not 
doubt that, were Daniel Boone alive to-day, he could 
teach the old piece to voice its music and could show 
again its ancient deadly art. 

In chronology Boone's time runs back to that of 
AVashington. He was born November second, 1734, 
the date of Washington's birth being 1732. His older 
brother was called Squire Boone, after the first Amer- 
ican Boone, who was himself an Englishman, but who 
came to America early in the history of the lower 
colonies. The Boone homestead was once located in 
Bucks County, Pennsylvania, but Daniel was bom 
after his parents had moved into Berks County, 



DANIEL BOONE 95 

Pennsylvania, near the town that is now Reading. 
Some historians say he was born in Bucks County. 

In his youth Daniel did not seek knowledge 
through the medium of books.* His mind Avas "not 
of the most ardent nature." Before him lay the 
great book of the Wilderness. Thus he became well 
acquainted with the habits of wild game animals, 
not ascribing to these creatures, we may be sure, 
any of those fanciful qualities which are accorded 
them in the silly fashion of these days, but knowing 
them as they actually were, and betimes using them, 
as was planned in the scheme of nature. 

When Boone was eighteen years of age his family 
heard many stories about the Yadkin Eiver country 
of North Carolina. Forthwith they moved through 
the Shenandoah valley into what was then a. yet 
wilder country than that of Pennsylvania. Here 
we have mythical tales of a fire hunt at night in 
which Daniel Boone "shined the eyes'^ of a certain 
maiden; of a deadly aim miraculously stayed, and 
a subsequent marriage unceremoniously sped. As 
to the fire hunt we may doubt, but as to the mar- 
riage there is no question. Boone married Rebecca 
Bryan in 1855. Therefore Daniel must move once 



*There was long known a tree near the Cumberland which 
bore this quaint inscription: "D. Boon Cilled A Bar on tMs tree 
year 1760." 



96 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

more, this time farther up the Yadkin, where the 
forests were yet more quiet, and neighbors still more 
distant. 

Previously to his marriage Boone had been a 
hunter, — what we would now call a professional 
hunter. He sometimes took hides and furs to the 
more distant Eastern settlements, and so saw some 
of the Virginia towns. He was, however, not merely 
a half-savage woods wanderer, although a past master 
in all woodcraft. The year before his marriage he 
was with the Pennsylvania militia, who fought the 
Indians along the border after the French had de- 
feated George Washington and his Virginians at 
Great Meadows. In the fatal Braddock fight Daniel 
Boone was a wagoner in the baggage train, and 
barely escaped with his life in the panic flight. 

At twenty-one he was a man grown, matured, ac- 
quainted with all the duties and dangers of frontier 
life, physically fit for feats of strength, activity and 
endurance, and both mentally and physically a per- 
fect machine for the purposes of vanguard work in 
the wilderness. His imagination painted him no 
gloomy picture of peril, but only scenes of things 
delectable a little farther to the west, across the 
hills that faced him. His emotions did not prevent 
his walking forthwith into what might be peril ; and 
having entered perils, he was content if each day 



DANIEL BOONE 97 

found him yet alive, nor did his mind entertain 
forebodings as to the morrow. The creed of the 
wilderness, the creed of wild things had entered into 
his soul. 

They call Daniel Boone explorer, hunter, Indian 
fighter. Let us figure him as philosopher. Temper- 
ament and training gave footing for that part of his 
philosophy that embodied his permanent personal 
conviction that "God had appointed him as an in- 
strument for the settlement of the wilderness." 

Boone, after his marriage, and after his edging 
out westward toward the head of the Yadkin, lived 
much as he had done before. His cabin was no 
better than his neighbor's, his little corn farm was 
much as theirs, albeit his table always had wild meat 
enough and to spare, and there were hides and furs 
in abundance. By this time two generations of white 
men* had held this slope' of the Appalachians. The 
buffalo had in all likelihood crossed the moun- 
tains to the westward, though one writer says they 
were "abundant" on the Yadkin at this time. Boone 
may perhaps have seen an elk now and then along the 
Yadkin, but even this is not certain. Bear, deer, 
turkey, small furred animals, he took in numbers. 
He was content, nor did he differ much from his 
fellows. He must have been about thirty years of 
age before he began to evince traits distinctly dif- 



98 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

ferent from those of his scattered wilderness neigh- 
bors; before he began to hear the Voices, whispering 
yet irresistible, that called him on; those Voices of 
the West, which for a hundred years called our best 
and boldest to come out into the unknown and the 
alluring; those Voices which to-day are perforce 
stilled forever. 

It was in the year 1769, in the month of May, 
that Boone started out for his first determined 
exploration of ^'^the far-famed but little-known land 
of Kentucky." He had before this time been eager 
to cross the range and see for himself ; indeed, he had 
made one short hunting trip into what is now the 
eastern edge of the state of Kentucky. Now, in the 
prime of life, at thirty-five years of age, he felt that 
the time had come for him to cross the range and 
make his abiding place in the West. 

We are accustomed to think that Boone was the 
first explorer of Kentucky, but such was by no means 
the case. Boone's first trip across the mountains, to 
the headwaters of the Holston, was in 1761. John 
Peter Sailing, a West Virginian, crossed Kentucky 
and Illinois as early as 1738. Doctor Thomas Walker 
and a party of Virginians had long before deliberately 
explored a part of Kentucky; and in 1751 Boone's 
Yadkin neighbor, Christopher Gist, — the same Gist 
that accompanied Washington in his dangerous 



DANIEL BO(yXE 99 

winter trip to the French forts on the Ohio, — made 
yet fuller explorations. 

Some of these early voyagings were not made of in- 
tent. Sailing crossed Kentucky as a captive of the 
Indians, who took him as far west as Kaskaskia; and 
Mary Draper Ingles, '^the first American bride west 
of the mountains/'' whose father established the first 
actual settlement west of the Alleghanies, was in 
1755 taken cajotive by the savages, and carried across 
Kentucky and parts of Ohio and Indiana, thus being 
an explorer quite against her will. 

Two hunters from Pittsburg, James Harrod and 
Michael Steiner or Stoner, after pushing out into 
the Illinois country, crossed the Ohio and traveled 
quite across Kentucky, as far south as the present 
city of Nashville, Tennessee. Steiner and Harrod 
were friends of Boone's, and Harrod built his stock- 
ade of Harrodsburg a year before Boonesborough 
was begun, his journey with Steiner having been 
made two years before Boone made his pilgrimage 
across the Divide. 

Kasper Mansker or Mansco, later a famous scout 
and Indian fighter, went with the Virginian "Long 
Hunters" into Kentucky in 1769. John Finley or 
Finlay had traded with the Indians on the Red River 
of Kentucky in 1752, some years before Boone saw 
that region. Finley was an associate of Boone's in the 

L.cfC. 



100 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

border wars before Boone was married, and it was 
Finley, in all likelihood, that first set Boone aflame 
with the desire to see and settle in Kentucky. Yet 
he might have had the counsel of James McBride, 
who in 175-1: visited the mouth of the Kentucky Eiver, 
and came back to say that he ^^lad found the best 
tract of land in Xorth America, and probably in the 
world." Finley added to these stories, and clinched 
it all by saying that game of all kinds was abundant, 
that the mountains were beautiful beyond descrip- 
tion, and that, moreover, salt could be manufactured 
on the spot. 

This last argument had very much to do with 
the settlement of Kentucky. Salt and lead 
were essentials. Salt was very heavy. The transpor- 
tation across these grim mountains was very difficult. 
If one could have salt in Kentucky, it would not be 
necessar}' for one to come back. To-day we can 
scarcely understand this reasoning, once so cogent. 

To strengthen the grasp upon historical facts and 
dates it is sometimes well to begin at the time 
close at hand, and go backward. We may there- 
fore make a reversed recapitulation of the explora- 
tions of Kentucky, this dark and bloody hunting and 
fighting ground of many tribes of strong-legged and 
peppery-headed savages. 

In 1770 the "Long Hunters'^ of Joseph Drake and 



DANIEL BOONE 101 

Henry Skaggs were in Kentucky -indeed, ran across 
Daniel Boone there ; yet Kentucky was then an oldish 
land. In 1766 James Smith and five others ex- 
jiilored much of west Tennessee, and worked north as 
far as Illinois. The Virginian, John McCullough, 
with one white companion, saw Kentucky in the sum- 
mer of 1769, pushed on northward as far as the point 
where Terre Haute, Indiana, now stands, and later 
descended the Mississippi River to New Orleans. 
Uriah Stone took a party of twenty hunters over the 
Cumberland Gap into Kentucky in the month of 
June, 1769, one month later than Boone's journey 
thither; but Stone had been in Kentucky in 1766. 

George Washington was on the Ohio Eiver in 1770 
and 1767; John Finley in 1752; Christopher Gist in 
1750; Doctor Thomas Walker in 1748; John Peter 
Sailing and John Howard, in 1742, we have noted. 
Before all these was the French expedition of 1735. 
Indeed, just one hundred years before Boone^s jour- 
ney into Kentucky, John Lederer, a Virginian, 
crossed the AUeghanies and fared westward for some 
distance; and ninety-nine years previous to Boonc"s 
first glimpse of the delectable land, Thomas Batts 
and party had ^^taken possession" of the headwaters 
of the Great Kanawha in the name of Charles II. 

We therefore see, with what will be a certain 
si:rprise to the average reader of American histor)-, 



102 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

that Kentucky and the trans-Appalachian land was 
not wholly unknown but indeed fairly well under- 
stood and accurately forecast in possibilities^ more 
than a generation before Daniel Boone ever saw it. 
Where, then, is Boone's fame as an explorer ? Upon 
what does his reputation as an adventurer rest? 
What claim had he to hold himself as an "instrument 
for the settlement of the wilderness" ? 

The answer to all these doubts is read in the rec- 
ord of the holding of Kentucky. It is found in the 
inefficacy of a "taking possession" by means of the 
temporary planting of a flag and the empty claiming 
of a territory extending from sea to sea. The flag of 
Boonesborough was planted never to come down. The 
stockade of the homebuilders was defended by an 
"unwavering fortitude." Kentucky discovered Dan- 
iel Boone, not Daniel Boone discovered Kentucky. 
Eead it in this way and all shall be plain. 

The birth of a new man in the world, the Ameri- 
can, had now taken place. The Old World explorers 
took possession with a flag, furled it and carried it 
away again. The new man, the American, flung out 
a flag that has never yet come down in all the world, 
and which, please God ! never shall so long as we re- 
main like to the first Americans. John Finley guided 
Daniel Boone across the Cumberland Gap; but he 



DANIEL BOONE 103 

guided him into a land now ready for a Daniel Boone 
— into a West now ready for the American man. 

It was, then, in the month of May, 1769, that 
Boone left the Yadkin settlements and started west- 
ward. He had as companions John Finley, Joseph 
Holden, James Monay or Mooney, William Coole or 
Cooley, and John Stewart or Stuart. Of all the 
different expeditions into the region west of the 
Appalachians this was the most important. Fol- 
lowing its doings, you shall see the long spur of 
the Anglo-Saxon civilization thrusting out and out 
into the West — to the Mississippi, the Missouri, the 
Eockies, the Pacific — and never setting backward 
foot. 

The journey over the mountains was not rapid 
and not continuous, it being necessary for the party 
to hunt as well as to explore. The rifle, the ax, the 
horse, the boat, were their aids and agents, their 
argument and answer to the wilderness. Evolution 
had gone on. The American was born. 

Boone and his friends seem to have camped on the 
east side of the Cumberland Mountains, where they 
remained for '^^some days." It was from this camp 
that they made expeditions, and at length climbed to 
a certain ridge whence they could see the glorious 
realm of Kentucky. On this, day they saw their first 
herd of buffalo, the first trail-makers over the Ap- 



104 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

palachians^ of which they killed some numbers. They 
saw, also, elk, deer and other animals. Boone was 
delighted. There thrilled in his heart all the joy of 
the hunter and explorer. Xow the little party moved 
over to the Eed River, where Finley had formerly 
been located. "Here," said Boone, ^"both man and 
beast may grow to their full size." That was good 
American prophecy. 

For six months this adventurous little party lived 
and hunted in their new empire. Then, swiftly and 
without warning, there came a taste of some of the 
disadvantages of this wild residence. Stewart and 
Boone were taken captive by the Indians and were 
carried to the north, a march of seven days. On the 
seventh night they made their escape and came back 
to their bivouac on the Red River, only to find that 
their friends had left them and returned to the 
settlements. As offset to this unpleasant news came 
their present discovery by Squire Boone and one 
companion, Alexander Neeley, who had followed the 
adventurers all the way into Kentucky. Daniel's 
older brother had brought with him some needful 
supplies, chief of these powder and lead, worth far 
more than gold and silver. 

"Soon after this period," goes on the simple and 
businesslike chronicle, "John Stewart was killed by 
the Indians." Hence the two Boone brothers were 



DANIEL BOONE 105 

left alone, Squire Boone's companion having met his 
fate in some mysterious manner, perhaps at the hands 
of the Indians, though others state that he was de- 
voured by wolves, — a very unlikely story. The two 
brothers built themselves a rude cabin of poles and 
bark, and there they spent the fall and summer of 
1769. In May of the following year Squire Boone 
returned to North Carolina.* 

It is now that for the first time we may accord 
justice to the picture that shows us the pioneer, 
Daniel Boone, alone in the wilderness of Kentucky. 
He was at this time, so far as he knew, the only 
white man in that entire section of country. Fear- 
less., adventurous and self-reliant, he extended his 
wanderings farther to the west, and visited the site 
of what is now the city of Louisville. His life 
depended entirely upon his own vigilance. He was 
without bread or salt, without even a dog to keep 
him company or serve as guard. Naturally he met 

♦There is continual discrepancy among the historians regarding 
these incidents. Thus another writer states that Boone and 
Stewart were twice talien prisoners by the savages, but that no 
northward journey was made by the Indians, who simply kept the 
prisoners at their camps, and at length dismissed them with a 
warning to leave Kentucky, as it was their own hunting ground 
and belonged to the Indians only. Again there seems confusion 
in the stories of the death of Neeley and Stewart. One account 
is that Boone saw Stewart shot down and scalped; another states 
that Stewart disappeared, and that no idea of his fate was obtained 
until years afterward, when in a hollow tree Boone found a skele- 
ton, near which was Stewart's powder horn, which had his name 
inscribed upon it. 



106 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

the savages. Once when pursued by the Indians, he 
escaped by the clever artifice of swinging himself far 
to one side of his trail by means of a depending 
grape-vine — a stratagem not recorded of any other 
Western adventurer. 

He seems to have been happy, alone in a 
solitude whose nature one can not understand 
who has never found himself under conditions 
at least mildly similar. His consolation came in his 
communings with the wild things about him, in his 
readings in the great book of nature. His gallery 
was the magnificent one of wood and stream and 
hill. "He stood upon an eminence, whence, looking 
about in astonishment, he beheld the ample plain and 
beauteous upland, and saw the river rolling in silent 
dignity. The chirp of the birds solaced his cares 
with music. The numerous deer and elk which 
passed him gave him assurance that he was in the 
midst of plenty. Cheerfulness possessed his mind. 
He was a second Adam — if the figure be not too 
strong — giving names to springs and rivers and 
places all unknown to civilized man." Such was the 
kingdom of the West. 

Now came again the faithful Squire Boone, all 
the way from the far-off Yadkin. These two dis- 
covered country of such fertility and such abun- 
dance in game that they no longer had any heart 



DANIEL BOONE 107 

left for the more barren region of Noiili Carolina. 
They determined to bring thither their families, and 
the fall of that year saw them both back at the old 
home, making plans for the pilgrimage into the 
new world beyond the Alleghanies. Eestless and ill- 
content we may suppose Daniel to have been, for it 
was not until the fall of 1773 that he was able to 
sell his farm and get together his effects. 

Five families left the Yadkin with him for Ken- 
tucky, these being joined later by forty men, all of 
whom traveled under the guidance of Boone. They 
proceeded westward in pastoral cavalcade, driving 
their herds and carrying their effects with them. So 
far, very well, until the tenth of October, when came 
the first ambuscade of the savage Indians. Six men of 
the party were killed, among these a son of Daniel 
Boone. The cattle were scattered or destroyed. No 
wonder that all lost heart except the steadfast leader. 
He was content to remain with the retreating party 
in the settlements of the Clinch River only until June 
of the following year. 

Now, biding his time, and longing for greater 
adventures, Boone receives a message from the gov- 
ernor of Virginia. It seems there are certain sur- 
veyors who have gone down the Ohio Eiver and 
have lost themselves in the wilderness. Could Daniel 
Boone discover these surveyors for the governor? 



108 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

Assuredly. And hence he undertakes his first real 
mission of independent leadership. He has but one 
companion, Michael Stoner or Steiner, and before 
them lie many hundred miles of trackless forest, with 
no road, no path, no trail. Yet the surveyors are 
found and led safely back to their own. 

This act seems to inspire confidence in Boone, 
and Colonel Henderson, a famous land speculator, 
employs him as his agent for the purchase from the 
Southern Indians of certain lands lying south of the 
Kentucky Eiver. Boone is successful in these nego- 
tiations. It is necessary now that there should be a 
road established between these outlying lands and the 
door of civilization. Who better than Boone to estab- 
lish this wilderness trail ? He lays out the way from 
the Holston to the Kentucky Eiver. We are told, 
without unnecessary flourish, that "in this work four 
of his party were killed and five woundeji." 

It was in April, 1775, that Boone erected a sta- 
tion or palisade on the Kentucky Eiver near a salt 
lick. We are told that the stockade was built "sixty 
yards from the south bank of the stream/' This 
Avas close to the present site of the town of Frank- 
fort, Kentucky. Another writer says the date of the 
foundation of Boonesborough — as the station was 
called — was June fourteenth, 1775. Dates are un- 
important. The fact is that Boone during that 



DANIEL BOONK 109 

spring attained his immediate and most cherished 
ambition. He established his home in the heart of 
this beautiful land of Kentucky. 

Thither he moved his family, his wife and 
daughter being the first white women willingly 
and of intent to set foot on the soil of Ken- 
tucky. Boone was now in the heyday of life, 
strong, fearless, tireless, a keen hunter, a cool-headed 
warrior. The ways of the wilderness were known to 
him. The imprint on the moss, the discolored water 
at the fountain, the broken bough, the abraded bark 
on the tree-trunk — all these things were an open 
book. No Indian could imitate the chatter of the 
squirrel, the calling of the crow, the gobbling of the 
wild turkey in his signals to his fellow savage, so 
closely that the acute ear of this master hunter did 
not detect the deceit. If savages crossed the country 
within a score of miles of his station, Boone knew 
of them, knew how they were armed, knew what 
was their purpose in that. land. None could have 
been better equipped than he as ^^an instrument for 
the settlement of the wilderness. 

Life went on in Kentucky much as on the Yadkin, 
on the Clinch or on the Holston. White men began to 
gather in at the station of Boonesborough, or at one 
of the two or three other posts that now were estab- 
lished in the land. These white men, shoulder to 



110 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

shoulder, fought the savages cheerfull}^, continuously, 
never for a moment thinking of surrendering their 
hold. The leader of this wild Avarfare was Daniel 
Boone, the man of "unwavering fortitude." 

The war of the rehellion against the Old World 
was now going on apace. Great Britain had given 
the red savages below the Great Lakes better arms 
and had deliberate!}" incited a more insatiate enmity 
against the white man. Whereas the Indians had 
at first adopted prisoners into their tribe, they now 
became more savage and implacable, in many more 
instances killing such prisoners as fell into their 
hands. 

Here we find ourselves again to some extent 
in the realms of imagination as to the adventures of 
Daniel Boone. We meet the ancient anecdote of the 
capture by the Indians of Boone's daughter, in com- 
pany with two daughters of the neighboring Callo- 
w^ay family. Some say that the children were out 
hunting up the cows, others that they were in a 
canoe on the river, and that the canoe was taken 
away by a savage who swam out and made them 
prisoners. We may be sure that Boone and Calloway 
raised a party in pursuit, and it may be deemed liis- 
torical fact that they rescued their daughters; 
though some state that the rescue was effected within 
a few miles of the post, whereas others place it after 



DANIEL BOONJ^^ 111 

a long journey, and state that Boone and Calloway 
were themselves taken prisoners by the savages, and 
in turn rescued by their surviving companions only 
after a bitter struggle. One may suit himself in 
these matters, yet he must believe that the settle- 
ment of Boonesborough was the center of a most 
savage and relentless warfare. 

The civilized necessity for salt was one of the chief 
causes of danger for these Kentuckians. In 1778 
Boone, with twenty-seven companions, was engaged 
in salt-making at the Blue • Licks, when they were 
surrounded by a large band of Indians. Boone was 
made captive, with others, and taken north across 
the Ohio River. These savages were Shawanese, from 
the Pickaway Plain. Eventually they took Boone as 
far north as Detroit, where the commandant, Ham- 
ilton, pleased with Boone's man.ly character, under- 
took to ransom him from the savages. The latter, 
however, would not hear to this, and after some 
parleying concluded to make Boone one of their 
tribe. 

He lived with them for some months, his fate 
meantime quite unknown to his friends at Boones- 
borough. At length, discovering a war party of more 
than four hundred savages preparing to invade the 
Kentucky frontier, he escaped from his captors, 
journeyed two hundred miles to the southward, and 



112 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

saved not only Boonesborougli but all the infant posts 
of this new commonwealth beyond the Alleghanies. 
This, were there naught else tO' commend him, 
should establish Boone's place as one of the great 
pillars of the west-bound civilization. 

After the savages were at last beaten away in this 
attack, Boone found that he was a man not without 
a country, but without a family. His wife, suppos- 
ing him dead, had returned to the old home on the 
Yadkin. There is a wide hiatus here in the Boone 
history, regarding which Boone himself is reticent. 

It is probable that at this time there began those 
legal difficulties that later caused the pioneer to leave 
his chosen land. He had been given a grant of land 
by the governor of Virginia, but the state of Kentucky 
had never been surveyed, and it was the fashion and 
privilege of every holder of one of these loose titles 
to locate his land as he pleased, and to record it in 
the simplest and most primitive fashion. Thus there 
came to be many claimants for the best of the lands, 
the desirable tracts being sometimes deeply covered 
by these old-time "shingle titles." 

The courts swiftly followed into these crude little 
Kentucky communities. It may have been the legal 
complications in which Boone now found himself 
that made him unwilling to speak of this period of 
his career. It is also known that at one time he was 



PANIEL BOONE 113 

custodian of some twenty thousand dollars of money, 
which he intended to take eastward across the Alle- 
ghanies for the purchase of lands. He was robbed, 
and hence carried to his grave the bitter sense that 
he had, through no fault of his own, been unable to 
carry out a trust that had been imposed on him. 
Yet, be these things as they may, the fact remains 
that he did again bring his family to his chosen set- 
tlement on the Kentucky Eiver. 

Meantime the Northern savages, under their own 
leaders, under the leadership of British officers, under 
the leadership of the dangerous renegades, Girty and 
McKee, came down time and again on the Ken- 
tucky settlements. The salt parties must go out as 
before, and in one of these excursions Squire Boone, 
Daniers beloved older brother, fell a victim to the 
savages. In the celebrated and ill-fated McGary 
fight — the blackest battle of all Kentuck}- — a son 
of Daniel Boone's fell with the flower of the frontier. 
Again and again the tribes came raging down, the 
Cherokees, the Pottawatamies, the Shawanese, all 
joining hands to wipe these settlements from the face 
of the earth. In the fight at Bryant's Station, little 
as it was, thirty of the savages were left on the field. 

The year 1781 was one of wrath for the thin firing 
line on the western side of the Divide. All the fights 
and the fighters centered about or came from the 



114: THE WAY TO THE WEST 

^^Dark and Bloody Ground." Clark, Hardin, Har- 
mar — all tliese started from Kentucky, and by reason 
of Kentucky. It was General Scott with one thou- 
sand Kentuckians that avenged the horrible defeat of 
St. Clair, killed two hundred of the victorious 
savages, and took back from them their booty. In 
the seven years from 1783 to 1790 there were fifteen 
hundred whites killed or taken captive in the state 
of Kentucky. In all these affairs, we may be sure, 
Daniel Boone held his full and manly part. He had 
drunk the war-drink of the savages during his cap- 
tivity, and the spirit of the savage had entered into 
him. 

Yet Boone was simple and unpretentious as any 
leader that ever lived. Once Simon Kenton, him- 
self a hardy soul, set out with some friends on a 
little hunt from the station at Boonesborough. They 
were fired upon by Indians from ambush. One man 
was shot down by the Indians within seventy yards 
of the stockade. His murderer would have scalped 
him had not Kenton dropped him, a, corpse beside 
a corpse. Then it was general melee until Daniel 
Boone and ten others came out from the stockade to 
assist their fighting comrades. Kenton killed an- 
other Indian, and then there came a rush. Boone 
directed a charge upon the savages, but was shot 



DANIEL BOONE 115 

down, a ball breaking his leg. Kenton, brave fellow 
that he was, shot down Boone's assailant and carried 
Boone safely into the fort. As he lay on the conch 
receiving attention for the leg broken by the ball, 
Boone sent for Kenton and. said: "Well, Simon, 
yon have behaved like a man to-day. Indeed you are 
a fine fellow." That was all there was to it. They 
made no great parade in those days. There was 
no proclamation in the public places. There were no 
illustrated newspapers, no gifted war correspondents 
to describe the heroism of that time. A similar act 
to-day would have made both participants famous, 
would perhaps have won for both a Victoria Cross, 
and would have afforded imaginative correspondents 
excellent opportunity. The West had no Victoria 
Crosses, nor needed any. 

In times of such continual excitement and danger 
it is small wonder that there has been but scant 
record kept of individual deeds of daring. Boone 
himself was not wont to boast of his own prowess, 
and regarding his deeds of arms there are not many 
authentic anecdotes. 

One of the best known of his adventures was that 
in which he met two savages in the forest while he 
himself was alone. Those were flint-lock days, and 
Boone was, according to the story, able, by watch- 
ing the flash of the first savage's rifle, to throw him- 



116 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

self out of the way of the bullet. This manoeuver 
he repeated with the second Indian. Then he calml}^ 
shot one Indian dead with his rifle, closed with the 
other, received a blow of his tomahawk on his own 
rifle barrel, and killed the savage with his knife. A 
statue commemorating this feat was later placed 
above the south door of the rotunda in the Capitol 
at Washington. 

There was need in Boone's case of fortitude, not 
only of the physical but of the moral sort. In 1793 
Kentucky, which had formerly been a county of the 
state of Virginia, was set up as a state by itself, 
with courts, jails, judges, lawyers and all the ap- 
purtenances of the artificial civilization that Boone 
had hoped to leave forever behind him. 

Then came lawsuits regarding the lapping titles. 
Daniel Boone, his blue eyes troubled and bewildered, 
found himself among the haggling officials of the 
law courts. It broke his heart. Stunned but not 
protesting, he gave up that beautiful land he had en- 
abled all these others to find and to hold. He was 
old now, and had fought the main fight of his life 
only to find himself the loser. 

He left now for the mouth of the great Kan- 
awha, but found the hunting poor. A son of 
his had crossed the Mississippi Kiver and sent 
back word that there was still a West, still a 



DANIEL BOONE 117 

country where were buffalo and elk, where were 
otter and beaver in the streams. There was to 
be one more pilgrimage for Daniel Boone, a pil- 
grimage down the Ohio River, ending in the region, 
still wilderness, not far from the point that is 
now the city of St. Louis. Bear in mind that this 
latter point was not within the United States. Dan- 
iel Boone was an emigrant from the land he had 
founded. He was going now out from under the 
infant Stars and Stripes. 

In token of his character, the Spanish governor of 
Louisiana gave Boone some sort of trifling com- 
mission. He was made commandant or syndic, an 
official with about the same importance as a country 
justice of the peace to-day. By the terms of his set- 
tlement in that country Boone was entitled to a tract 
of something like ten thousand acres of land. He 
was wrongly informed that, as he was an officer of the 
state, he need not settle nor improve his land. Once 
more a fatal mistake for the man who knew the book 
of nature better than the printed page. 

Late in his life we find the American government, 
now reaching its control over this trans-Missouri 
country, taking up the question of Boone's tract 
of land and allowing him, with extreme gen- 
erosity, one-tenth of that which by every right and 
title of justice ought to have been liis own in fee 



118 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

simple in return for what he had done for the civil- 
ization of America. This was the poor pittance that 
Daniel Boone, one of the great Americans, was able 
to hand down to his posterity. 

With this poor heritage ^go the few incidents of a 
meager and in some cases uncertain personal history, 
the main facts of which have been given above. 
There is even uncertainty, or rather discrepancy, re- 
garding the date of his death. One writer states that 
he died at the age of eighty-four, in the year 1818. 
The date of his death was really September twenty- 
sixth, 1820, he being at that time eighty-six years of 
age. 

In his later years Boone kept up those practices 
that had endeared themselves to him in his earlier 
lifetime. In a mild way he was a trapper, and always 
he was a hunter. Even when he had passed his 
eightieth year he went regularly each fall in pur- 
suit of the deer, the turkey, the elk or the furred 
animals, or followed his simple pastime of squirrel 
hunting, in which he was very expert. It was his 
custom on these excursions to exact a promise from 
his attendant that, in case of his death, his body 
should be properly cared for. He long kept his 
coffin under his bed at his home, near Charette, 
Missouri. Once, taken sick in camp, he marked out 
the place for his grave, and told his negro servant 



DANIEL BOONE 119 

(some say his Indian friend or servant) what should 
be done with his body. 

From this indisposition, however, he recovered, and 
went on several other hunts later. Failing gradu- 
ally, though not from any specific disease, Boone met 
the great and final enemy ^\dth the same fortitude 
that had been with him all his life. He had said 
farewell to all earthly ambitions, and was ready to 
die when the time might come. He kept the coffin 
under his bed not in any bravado, but in a simple 
wish for complete preparedness. His personal hab- 
its remained sweet and simple as of old. 

Boone seems to have wandered a little farther 
to the West than his home near St. Louis. It is 
said that he "saw the mouth of the Kansas Eiver," 
and that he noted, with the impatient longing of 
an old man, the passing up-stream, into the mys- 
terious Northwest, of those early parties of fur 
traders, the voyagers who were now heading the 
far Western American migration. It was now too 
late in the closing years. It is said that he trapped 
on the Kaw and the Osage, and he is said to have 
made one journey "up the Missouri, and to have 
reached the mouth of the Yellowstone", whence he 
was driven back by savages. 

His sons and grandsons were figures in Western 



120 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

history, always frontiersmen, travelers. A grand- 
daughter became the wife of a governor of Oregon. 
His grandson, Kit Carson, was to hold fast the fam- 
ily traditions on many a Western trail; but there 
were to be no more trails for Daniel Boone. Over- 
taken once more by America, once more surrounded 
by the civilization from which he had by choice al- 
ways alienated himself, he at length lay doT^m peace- 
fully to his final sleep beneath the trees. 

Some twenty-five years after his death, the legis- 
lature of Kentucky awakened to a sense of the great- 
ness of this man, and to the onerous nature of that 
debt of latitude under which he had placed his 
commonwealth. By virtue of a special enactment, 
the bodies of Boone and his faithful wife were moved 
from their Missouri home, eastward across the Miss- 
issippi Eiver, and laid at rest in the cemetery of 
Frankfort, close to that original stockade where, sup- 
ported by an '^^unwavering fortitude-', there first flew 
the hard beset flag of the west-bound. These cof- 
fins came garlanded with flowers, heralded with 
music, surrounded with tardy honors. They were laid 
away on September thirteenth, 1845. There were effu- 
sive speeches in abundance, the chief oration being 
pronounced by Mr. Crittenden, "the leading orator 
of his time,'^ as he is called in the chronicle. Thus 



DANIEL BOONE 121 

at last this primeval patriarch, this Father of the 
Trontier, this leader of the Western home-builders^ 
came home to sleep on the soil that was by right his 
own. 



CHAPTER IX 

A FRONTIER REPUBLIC 

If we have been successful in the first of our un- 
dertakings, that of investigating the first stage of 
the American transcontinental pilgrimage, which 
brought the Anglo-Saxon civilization permanently 
into the Mississippi valley, we must have gained in 
our earlier chapters some knowledge of the char- 
acteristics of the west-bound men, and of the mo- 
tives that actuated them. 

We shall also have noticed the beginning of a new 
type of man, — a man born of new problems, new 
necessities. Obliged to think and act for him- 
self, it was natural that this man should 
learn to be restive when others thought for 
him. It was not to be expected that the men of New 
England and New York should understand this new 
man. We do not understand the Asiatics to-day; 
and at the time Daniel Boone reached the Miss- 
issippi it was farther from the Mississippi to New 
York than it is from New York to the Philippines 
to-day. 

The American pilgrimage, whether at times pain- 
122 



A FRONTIER REPUBLIC 123 

ful, halting, broken, or at other times rapid, fev- 
erish, insane, has at the one time or the other 
been no better than the transportation at hand. 
The long, hard roads, the slow travel of those early 
trans-Appalachian days were at the bottom of the 
greatest national problem of those days. 

The men of the East could not believe that loyalty 
might be expected of the men of the West; and the 
latter, feeling the force of their geographical position, 
and feeling also their own ability to take care of 
themselves, openly talked of all manner of schisms, 
sectionalisms and governmental speculations. The 
West talked secession almost before it was a West. 
Under the conditions of those days it was small crime 
that it did so ; the fact proved no disloyalty of the old 
type, but the strength and vigor of the new type 
of American that had now been born, which declared 
itself able to hold and govern its own new-found 
world. 

It may profit us at this stage of our study to turn for 
a time from the individual frontiersman and settler, 
and to take up in more concrete form some of the 
things that these frontiersmen and settlers did in 
combination — some of the phases of the Western 
civilization as affected by the ever present problems 
of transportation. 

The question of geography, which is the same 



124 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

as to say the question of transportation, led to 
more than one attempt to set up entirely in- 
dependent governments west of the Alleghany 
Divide, Just as it also much affected the des- 
tinies of the unborn states of the Northwest 
Territory — Asenesipia, Pelesipia, Cherronesus, and 
others. Of these divers attempts at secession, some 
were honestly based upon a wish for commercial de- 
velopment that did not seem possible in connection 
with a government situated far to the east, at the end 
of impassable mountain roads. Other attempts were 
mere personal intrigues, carried on with a view to 
personal advantage, as was the effort of the unspeak- 
able Wilkinson to alienate the population of the 
Mississippi valley from the standards of the gov- 
ernment at Washington. There were other attempts, 
honest attempts at secession, or more properly speak- 
ing, segregation, on the part of considerable com- 
munities whose interests, under the conditions of 
the time, seemed far from identical with those of 
the tidewater population. 

Chief among the records of these movements for 
an honest Western secession stands the story of the 
famous Free State of Franklin — the story of an en- 
terprise that to-day we ignorantly call a chimera, an 
absurdity or worse, though to the men concerned in 
it the project seemed not less than necessary, just and 



A FRONTIER REPUBLIC 125 

right. The history of this state, which was bom of 
bad roads and populated by a new breed of Ameri- 
cans, fits nicely with our theme at this stage of its 
progress. 

As to the extent of this state that once was, but 
is no more, we discover that it once included fifteen 
counties of Virginia, six of West Virginia, one-third 
of the state of Kentucky, one-half of Tennessee, 
two-thirds of Alabama and one-quarter of Georgia, 
as those states exist to-day. Wherefore it may seem 
that John Sevier and his friends were dealing with 
a considerable empire of their own, one much larger 
than most folk of to-day realize or understand. 

It was one of those first republics west of the Alle- 
ghanies, one of those first instances of spontaneous 
self-government that have so often proved the vital 
strength of the restless yet self-respecting and law- 
abiding American character. How the men of the 
Free State of Franklin loved their little empire, how 
they defended it against the savages that pressed 
upon its borders, how they held the soil on which 
they had set the standard of west-bound civilization 
— all that is a legitimate part of the birth-history of 
the West. 

Tennessee to-day honors John Sevier, founder of 
the Free State of Franklin, with a shaft recording 
thirty-five battles and thirty-five victories. This 



126 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

Bhaft perpetuates the memory of a population that 
''in fifteen years engaged in three revolutions, or- 
ganized and lived under five different governments, 
established and administered the first independent 
government in America, founded the first .church and 
the first college in the West, put in operation the 
first newspaper west of the Alleghanies, met and 
fought the soldiers of King George in half a dozen 
battles from King's Mountain to the gates of Charles- 
ton, checked and beat back four of the most power- 
ful tribes of America, and left to Tennessee the 
heritage of a fame founded upon courage and stead- 
fastness.'' 

In the times just preceding and following the 
Eevolutionary War, the American colonies, even 
though bold enough to encounter successfully the 
forces of the mother countr}^, were none the less 
timid and lacking in self confidence. There was 
no strong centralized government, nor was the loy- 
alty of the different colonies or the different men 
of each colony a thing grounded upon reason or 
even an imperative self interest. 

In no thing was America so rich as in big men, by 
which I do not mean ''great" men as the term com- 
monly goes. The characters of those early days stand 
out clearly and distinctly before us now. It was 
still the day of individualism. The men of the 



^A PRON^TIEE REPUBLIC 127 

Free State were the boldes;t of those bold indi- 
viduals who headed out from the secure settlements 
of the seaboard, through gloomy forests, into the un- 
known wilderness, west of what was then the back- 
bone of the United States, the rugged Alleghany 
range. 

These men made their own trails, and they were 
more careful with the trails that led westward 
than with those that connected them with the East 
that they had left behind. It was no act of dis- 
loyalty that caused souls bold as these to cast 
about them in matters of organization and of govern- 
ment. The day of kings was gone for them. The 
day of Liberty was dawning. They carried with 
them, as have their west-bound fellows ever since, 
the principles of self-government. Where the com- 
munity was, there arose the Law, there began the 
state. 

With them the community was not the popula- 
tion they had left far behind, but that population 
close at hand, banded together, experiencing a com- 
mon danger, and entertaining a common ambition, — 
the population that had come West and intended to 
remain. The branches of the Law no longer sheltered 
them. They were alone. There was no Law. What, 
then, was to be done except to plant anew the seeds 



128 THS WAY TO THE WEST 

of the Law, and let it blossom here, as it had done 
before, and has since, on the soil of America ? 

Yet, poor as was the hold that these people now 
retained upon the country that bore them, they 
were not lacking in active loyalty. When they heard 
of the first battles of the Revolution, the first thought 
of the men of the "Washington District" was how 
they might best prove of service in the con- 
flict that was to ensue. So much might be ex- 
pected, for the name of Washington District was 
given by reason of Sevier's friendship with Wash- 
ington, later to be the first president of the States; 
and the District had sent from its scanty numbers 
fifty riflemen, under Captain Evan Shelby, who took 
part on the Indian battlefield of Point Pleasant, 
in Virginia, in the fall of K'74. 

These men of Washington District were always in 
the front when the fighting began, and had it seemed 
practicable to their leaders, they had liked nothing 
better than to join their forces always with those of 
the state of North Carolina. There was not one 
coward in the one hundred and thirteen men that 
signed Sevier's petition to the legislature of Xorth 
Carolina. Yet no formal annexation was made by 
North Carolina, though John Sevier, Charles Rob- 
ertson, John Carter and John Hall were seated as 
delegates in the North Carolina legislature. 



A FEONTIER REPUBLIC 129 

At this time North Carolina's state constitution 
was formed (November, 1776), fixing the western 
boundary of the state as that named by King 
Charles, which reached to ''the South Seas." No 
one knew what so indefinite a description might 
mean, but John Sevier was wise enough to know 
that so far from getting the benefit of a stable 
government and the protection of the lawsi, his com- 
panions west of the Appalachians would be in a land 
practically without law save of their own making. 
Therefore, having in view all the time this pos- 
sibility of a breaking away of a considerable body 
of West-American population by its own sheer 
weight, he succeeded in passing a resolution in the 
North Carolina legislature, stating that the above 
mentioned limits should not operate as a bar to the 
"later establishment of one or more governments 
west of North Carolina, by consent of the legisla- 
ture of that state." We might call Sevier another 
of those great prophets of the West, a prophet 
who possessed not only personal courage and dar- 
ing of his own, but a calm and sober intellect that 
foresaw the growing up in the West of not only 
one but many governments; albeit not his nor any 
other mind might at that time see those changes that 
were to unite all these component parts into one effec- 
tive whole. 



130 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

There may be interest in tracing from its incep- 
tion the growth of this little Western republic. We 
shall find its history lovingly written, and as though 
to hand, by an inhabitant of the state of Tennessee 
who has given care in research along those lines.* 
"This lovely mountain section of the old Watauga 
settlements/' writes he, ^T^eing the cradle of Tennes- 
see and in some respects also, of the vast valley of the 
Mississippi, is rich in historical interest. Here in 
the month of May, 1772, there was formulated by 
Sevier, Eobertson and others the first written com- 
pact of civil government on American soil. It was 
then they drew up the celebrated Watauga Articles 
of Association, and set up a government west of the 
long line of the Blue Kidge and apart from colo- 
nial influence. 

''These articles set on foot all the machinery of 
the new state, the future Tennessee; they estab- 
lished courts to be presided over by five com- 
missioners, who had entire control in matters af- 
fecting the common good; they provided a gov- 
ernment, paternal but simple and moderate, albeit 
summary and firm. This form of government proved 
satisfactory and sufficient for a number of 3'ears, 
Sevier and Eobertson continuing leading spirits. 



♦Alexander Hynds, of Dandridge, Tenn. 



A FRONTIER REPUBLIC 131 

At this time they probably believed themselves to 
be on Virginia territory, for there was great ques- 
tion as to the location of the northern boundary 
line of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes, thence west 
to the South Seas — the vague demarcations of 
Charles II which were accepted in the legislature of 
North Carolina. 

^'It was in 1776 that Sevier drew up his able pe- 
tition to North Carolina asking to be annexed there- 
to. Of the one hundred and thirteen signers, all 
but two wrote their own names, which speaks not 
so badly for these hardy frontiersmen. Their re- 
quest was granted, and about April, 1777, Watauga 
became a part of North Carolina. It still continued 
to be known as the Washington District, largely on 
account of geographical situation. At that time it 
embraced practically all of the present Tennessee. 

*^To show the rapid progress of civilization in 
that remote region, it may be stated that in 1778 
or 1779 Reverend Samuel Doan, a young graduate 
of Princeton, came into the Watauga country, or- 
ganized Salem Presbyterian church, and in 1780 
erected a log cabin school-building, the first literary 
institution in Tennessee, if not the first one in the 
Mississippi valley, as has been frequently asserted. 
In the year 1783 this institution was chartered by 



132 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

!N"ortli Carolina as Martin Academy^ and is knovm 
now as Washington College. 

''The events leading to the formation of the state 
of Franklin grew out of the effort of the state of 
North Carolina to pay her share of the thirty-eight 
millions of the Kevoliitionary War deht. Congress 
[proposed to sell all the vacant lands in the several 
states, against the pro rata indebtedness of such 
states. Therefore, in June, 1784, the (North Car- 
olina) legislature passed an act giving all of Wash- 
ington District to the United States. This gift was 
conditioned upon an acceptance within two years, 
otherwise the act was to be null and void." 

This transfer of the sturdy population of the dis- 
trict brought up questions somewhat in advance of 
those we argue to-day regarding government with- 
out the consent of the governed, and the transfer 
of territory without the consent of the inhabitants. 
At firsit the frontiersmen seemed not to object 
to the change, but reflection showed them that the 
act failed to give them any sort, of civil or mili- 
tary government during the two years Congress 
might elect to employ before accepting the gift. 

This contingency justly alarmed the population of 
Washington District. They found themselves in- 
habitants of a No-Man's-Land, an outlaw's land, 
living neither under a government of their own es- 



A FRONTIER REPUBLIC 133 

tablishing, nor any other whatsoever. In these un- 
usual and perplexing circumstances it was no wonder 
that the people of the District called a convention. 
This meeting was held at Jonesboro, August, 1784, 
John Sevier himself presiding. Witness now the 
wisdom of his proviso in the session of the North 
Carolina legislature, which, in short, contemplated 
precisely the act that was now taken. It was re- 
solved to set up another government, and these 
hardy citizens, so capable of self-government, greeted 
with applause the establishment of a free and in- 
dependent state. The convention adjourned to meet 
again in November, to ratify the constitution and 
further to complete the organization of the state 
government. 

"Meantime,^' continues our historian, '^'^Xorth Car- 
olina, becoming alarmed at the state of affairs, re- 
pealed the act of cession of Washington District, 
gave to the secessionists a superior court of their 
own, and made Sevier brigadier-general of the or- 
ganized militia. All of this was most probably mis- 
understood by the people, who proceeded to elect 
delegates to another convention, over which Sevier 
presided, though he steadily protested against a sep- 
aration. A constitution was, however, adopted, an 
election for representatives was ordered, and when 



134 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

that body met, Sevier was elected go-vernor and all 
the machinery of the new state set in motion/^ 

This little Western republic certainly seemed to 
have trouble in finding itself. Its very name is even 
to-day a matter of discussion. One writer* says: 
^'The Washington District declared itself independ- 
ent, and organized a government under the name of 
Frankland. The name was afterward changed to 
Franklin." The writer just quotedf states : "There 
was considerable discussion as to the spelling of the 
name, many insisting in convention that Trank- 
land,^ that is to say 'Freeland,' should be the name. 
Others were for following the name of Benjamin 
Franklin. The latter spelling carried by a very 
small majority in the convention, as cited by Eam- 
sey. There is, however, yet extant one letter written 
by General William Cocke from Frankland." 

The name Franklin was the one officially accepted. 
Franklin himself did not know of the honor he had 
received until some eighteen months after it had 
been conferred. He declined to be caught by this 
compliment, did not commit himself in favor of the 
new commonwealth, but advised the citizens of this 
pseudo-state to submit their claims to Congress, 
and indeed outlined to them the virtue of that cen- 



*N. p. Langford. 
fAlexander Hynds, 



A FRONTIER REPUBLIC 135 

tralized government wliicli was later to be felt on 
both sides of the x\lleghanies. 

This new population now had a government and 
a scheme of education, and indeed a general plan 
of living and growth and progress, yet it lacked 
many of the advantages of an older civilization. 
There must, of course, be revenue, and hence taxes; 
and since a currency was not forthcoming, the leg- 
islature passed an act authorizing the payment of 
taxes and salaries in articles of trade. Legal tender 
were beaver, otter and deer skins, each at six shil- 
lings; raccoon and fox skins, worth one shilling 
and three pence each. Beeswax, at one sliilling a 
pound, was also legal tender; and, most remarkable 
of all, though there were those who wondered not 
at the precedent, it was provided that taxes and 
official salaries might also be paid in rye whisky, 
at three shillings six pence a gallon, or in peach 
brandy at three shillings a gallon! As to the ex- 
tent of the reward of practical politics in that day, 
we may cite an act passed by that same legislature. 

"Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the 
State of Franklin, and it is hereby enacted by the 
authority of same, that from and after the first day 
of January next, the salaries of this commonwealth 
shall be as follows: 



136 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

"His Excellency, the Governor, per annum, a hun- 
dred deer skins. 

'^His Honor, the Chief Justice, five hundred deer 
skins. 

'^he Secretary to His Excellency, the Governor, 
five hundred raccoon skins. 

"County Clerk, three hundred beaver skins. 

"Clerk of the House of Commons, two hundred 
raccoon skins. 

"Members of the Assembly, per diem, three rac- 
coon skins. 

"Justice fees for serving a warrant, one mink skin.'' 

Crude enough seem such devices to us to-day, 
yet we must remember that we are in close chron- 
ological touch with those very times. Nor did the 
new state seem to do ill with its self-established 
machinery of government. Just as the people of 
America retained something of the vital and useful 
customs and standards of old England, discarding 
the ancient and outworn, so did the people of the 
state of Franklin cling to the standards of their 
mother state of North Carolina. The constitution 
of North Carolina was adopted without very great 
change. 

"For some time," goes on our writer, "the state 
of Franklin moved on serenely, until Governor Se- 
vier officially notified Governor Martin of North 



A FRONTIER REPUBLIC 137 

Carolina that his people would no longer recognize 
the authority of that state. Governor Martin re- 
plied explaining the cession act, and threatening the 
'revolters' with armed invasion unless they returned 
to their allegiance. This letter, largely circulated, 
was not without effect, though in the main the peo- 
ple adhered to the new state. 

^''N'orth Carolina then passed an act of amnesty 
for those that cared to avail themselves of it, which 
provided for the election of members to her own leg- 
islature. The same act appointed civil and military 
officers for the district. Thus there was to be seen 
the strange spectacle of two sets of officers over one 
and the same set of people, ^Hurrah for Franklin !^ 
being the battle cry of one, and *^Hurrah for North 
Carolina !' the watchword of the other. Great con- 
fusion followed. Franklin held courts at Jonesboro, 
and North Carolina held hers near by, each denying 
the authority of the other. The rival officials quar- 
reled and fought over their supposed rights. The 
victors turned the vanquished neck and crop out of 
doors, and retained possession of the records, such as 
they were. 

'Tailing to obtain recognition from North Car- 
olina and an admission of the independence of the 
state of Franklin, Sevier laid the matter before Con- 
gress. Here he failed. He turned to Georgia, and 



138 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

was told by that state that Franklin and the old 
state of Xorth Carolina must settle their own af- 
fairs themselves. Day by day the Franklin party 
became weaker, and on the expiration of Sevier's 
term as governor no election was held, and the 
state of Franklin therefore ceased to exist. Indeed 
it is a matter of surprise that it survived four years 
of such constant and irritating opposition. The ex- 
planation lies in the fact that no other man in 
Tennessee before or since has had so firm a hold upon 
the popular heart as did John Sevier. In one in- 
stance at least the fickle multitude was constant. 

"Soon after Franklin's downfall, Sevier was ar- 
rested by N'orth Carolina officers on the charge of 
treason, the warrant having been granted by Judge 
Spencer of the old state, and he was taken over 
the mountains for trial at Morganton. There he 
was at once surrounded by many of his old Eling's 
Mountain comrades, and after a short sojourn re- 
turned home without trial and without interference. 
He was soon elected to the N"orth Carolina senate, 
where he took his seat, that section of the legisla- 
ture restoring to him all his old-time privileges. 
Almost immediately thereafter he was elected to 
Congress (in 1789) from the 'Washington District 
of North Carolina,' thus becoming the first member 
of that body from the valley of the Mississippi." 



A FRONTIER REPUBLIC 139 

All this turmoil as to the bestowal of govern- 
mental allegiance was going forward at the same 
time that the settlers of Kentucky were raising their 
corn under rifle guard, and constantly fighting back 
the savage population that hemmed them in. They 
too were clamoring for national support, or individ- 
ual independence. Meantime, too, the intrigues of Wil- 
kinson in the Mississippi valley were continuing, and 
the men of the Free State of Franklin even looked 
southward for an alliance with the nation holding 
control of the mouth of the great Mississippi high- 
way. 

The formation of the new state was a blow 
not so much at the government at Washington as 
at the mother state of North Carolina ; and the lat- 
ter was at first willing enough to have the separa- 
tion take place, for she was tired of paying war 
debts for fighting the Indians on her far-off frontier. 

The times being so far out of joint, we can scarcely 
wonder that the hardy Indian fighters imder Sevier 
at one time (September twelfth, 1788) sent word to 
the Spanish minister Gardoquoi that they wished to 
put themselves under the protection of Spain — a 
thing to-day difficult to believe of any part of the 
American pojjulation, yet not wholly irrational for 
those times and conditions. Nor is this all of the 
story of these little splits and schisms and secessions. 



140 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

wliicli for a time took place on the Western slope 
of the Alleghanies. 

Another writer* describes some of these early 
transactions. ^^he settlers of the district of the 
Coliunbia Eiver/' says he, 'Vho were under the 
jurisdiction of North Carolina, gave the name 
of Miro to the district they had formed; this 
as evidence of their partiality for the Spanish 
government. The promise of protection the inhabit- 
ants received from Gardoquoi was so modified by 
Miro £hat the scheme, though prosecuted for a time 
with vigor, finally failed from inability of the 
secessionists to comply with the conditions of recog- 
nition. Yet another center of sedition was lo- 
cated in the valley of the Mississippi. A com- 
pany composed of Alexander Moultrie, Isaac Huger, 
Major William Snipes, Colonel Washington and 
other distinguished South Carolinians was formed 
at Charleston in 1789, which purchased from the 
state of Georgia fifty-two thousand nine hundred 
square miles of territory, extending from the Yazoo 
to the banks of the Mississippi near Natchez, the 
Choctaws, Chicasaws and Spain each claiming a por- 
tion of this territory. The ulterior designs of the 
company in the purchase and settlement of the coun- 
try were carefully concealed for some time,'^ 

*N. p. Langford. 



A FROKTIER REPUBLIC 141 

Tlie arcli conspirator Wilkinson did liis best to 
assume a position of importance with this little body 
of malcontents, and freely promised Miro that 
he would unite all this population under the flag of 
Spain. He naively stirred up the Indian savages 
of the Mississippi valley to renew their attacks on 
the Western frontier, in order that the Western 
settlers might the more quickly realize the ineffi- 
ciency of the government at Washington to afford 
them the protection they needed. Meantime also 
it was quite possible that Great Britain might make 
an invasion of Louisiana, by way of the water trail 
from Canada to the Mississippi valley. Assuredly the 
times were troublous, and fortunate indeed was it 
that the government at Washington still lived, that 
good fortune favored the minds and hands in control. 

It was not the wisdom, of the government, not 
the ability of the political leaders that solved these 
perplexing problems. Presently they went far toward 
solving themselves, as do most American problems 
to-day. By this time all the mountain roads and 
water trails were becoming more defined and more 
frequented; the fighting white men were slowly 
beating off their savage foes. 

Then at last came the time when the frontier, held 
fast by many braided trails, looked back across the 
moim tains, and resolved to pin fast its allegiance 



142 THE Wx\Y TO THE WEST 

then and forever to the government that had heen 
left behind, the government of Americans under 
principles established and fully proved on the Ameri- 
can soil. The threads that bound fast the new settle- 
ments with the old, the threads that grew and 
strengthened into indissoluble bonds, which in spite 
of the fears of those who dreaded the accession of 
any more large territory, held firm the whole wide 
realm of the West to the mother colonies on the East, 
were simply the natural and artificial trails, later to 
be blended into a vast network, intermingling and 
inextricable, weaving and making permanent the web 
of a common and unsectionalized civilization. 

Such was the still pure Anglo-Saxon civilization, 
changed, purified and strengthened by some gener- 
ations of tenure of the American soil, at the time 
when it reached the great central highway, the 
mighty Mississippi, there to pause for a time, facing 
new problems attendant upon the next great journey 
onward and outward in the pathway of the sun. 



THE WAY TO THE ROCKIES 

CHAPTER I 

DAVY CROCKETT 

Tliere is no figure of speech that so exactly 
describes the westward advance of the American 
population as that which compares it to the feeding 
of a vast flock of wild pigeons. These, when they 
fall on a forest rich with their chosen food, ad- 
vance rapidly, rank after rank. As those in the 
front pause for a moment to feed, others behind 
rise and fly on beyond them, settling for a time to 
resume their own feeding operations. Tims the 
progress of the hosts resembles a series of rolling 
waves, one passing ever on beyond the other, each 
wave changing its own relative position rapidly, yet 
ever going forward. 

It was so with the American people. The Alle- 
ghanies could not stop them in their west-bound 
march, nor the terrors of a relentless Indian war- 
fare, which endangered lives dearer to the rugged 

frontiersman than his own. Nothing would do 
143 



144 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

•until tlie pathway of the waters liad brought the 
American settler to the Mississippi Eiver, the great 
highway that, whether by whim, chance, or design, 
had now become wholly the property of the growing 
American government. Having arrived at the 
Mississippi Eiver, the population could not rest. 
Those behind pressed ever on. 

Once across the Alleghanies the pathways had been 
pointed out by nature; beyond the Mississippi these 
pathways were reversed. Man had not wings like 
the wild bird. His pilgrimage must still be slow, 
his methods of locomotion clumsy. The paths no 
longer lay even with the currents of the streams. The 
adventurer into the West must, for the most part, 
follow the reversed pathways of the waters. Briefly, 
the journey of tbe frontiersman from Pennsylvania 
to the Mississippi was one of angles, the first leg run- 
ning to the southwest, thence northwest, thence south- 
west. The pilgrimage profile from the Mississippi to 
the Eockies was equally angular. The line of travel 
did not, for the most part, run directly to the west. 
It angled out and upward, wherever water trans- 
portation led, and where the streams showed the 
way. 

In tbe story of Daniel Boone we have seen how 
he moved again and again, seeking ever to edge a 
little farther to the west than his nearest neighbors. 



DAVY CROCKETT 145 

Still another great frontiersman, Davy Crockett, 
beloved of the American people, gives us instance of 
this patient progress of the west-bound, halting, 
advancing, but never tiring. The life of Crockett 
will afford in itself a good view of the profile of 
the population movement, and will give as well a 
notion of the life and customs of those early times. 

Davy Crockett, backwoodsman and bear hunter, 
magistrate, legislator and congressman; a man who 
at the time of his marriage scarcely knew one letter 
of the alphabet from the other, yet at middle age 
was one of the best-known figures of the American 
political world, and who was even mentioned as a 
possibility for the presidency of the United States; 
a man that lived like a savage and died like a hero — 
one of the uncouthest gentlemen that ever breathed — 
such a man as this could have been the product of 
none but an extraordinary day. We shall do well to 
note the stors' of his life, for his is one of those 
colossal figures now rapidly passing into the haze of 
forgetfulness or the mirage of mere conjecture. 

In some fashion the names of Boone and Crockett 
are often loosely connected. They were in part 
contemporaneous though not coincident. Showing 
in common the rugged traits of the typical man of 
their tim'e, they were yet distinctly unlike in many 
qualities. A writer who knew both men states that 



146 THE WxVY TO THE AYEST 

he considered Crockett the mental superior of 
Boone. After weighing carefully all the evidence 
obtainable — and there is much more information 
available concerning Crockett than in regard to 
Boone — one would be disposed to differ from such 
an opinion. 

Boone was the simpler and sincerer soul, the 
graver and more dignified figure; Crockett the more 
magnetic personality, the more plausible, if at times 
less candid, man. One man was practically as 
ignorant as the other. Boone had no taste for 
political life, and his sole wish was to live ever 
a little beyond that civilization of which he was 
the pioneer and guide. Crockett, built also of 
good, comuion, human clay, for two-thirds of his 
life seemed animated by no greater ambition. 

Then all at once we see him turned politician. He 
succeeds, and his name grows larger than his neigh- 
borhood and country. Not knowing the basis of the 
tariff, ignorant of the text of the Constitution, 
master of the practice, but unable to exjDlain the 
theory, of a caucus or a town meeting, he finds 
himself owner of a seat in the United States Congress, 
fairly the central figure of that Congress, the 
cynosure not only of the South but of the East 
and North. 

He is at this time nothing but a great, good- 



DAVY CROCKETT 147 

liumorecT boy, the very type alike of an open- 
Jianded generosity, and an open-mouthed and some- 
times ill-timed levity. He is the product of political 
accident. Yet, wonder of wonders, we find tliis man, 
quite past the time usually assigned as the limit 
for the development and fixing of a man's character, 
suddenly blossoming out into a second development, 
a second manhood, more thouditful and more dig;- 
nified than that of his early days. Without educa- 
tion when he started for the halls of Congress, he 
gains that education more rapidly than did ever 
man before. 

Crockett returned to his home a graver and broader 
man. Even his speech had gained freedom, ease 
and clarity, though still he delighted, perhaps more 
in jest than otherwise, to bring in the crudities of 
expression, the quips and quirks of that language 
through which he had, to his OAvn surprise and 
without his own plan, won his sudden notoriety — a 
notoriety that was later to turn to fame. 

There is not to be found in all the history of 
American statesmanship so swift and sound a ripen- 
ing into mature thought as that of this backwoods- 
man, the first political "mugwump" or independent; 
who engaged in politics for reasons of self-interest, 
and then all at once grew big enough to set self- 
interest aside and to do what seemed to him wise 



148 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

and right. — a type of statesmanship now well-nigh 
defunct in America. And yet we see him, in the 
pang of his first decisive political defeat, growing 
hitter at his reverses, losing the genial philosophy 
of his earlier years, even renouncing his country, 
and forthwith turning away from family, friends 
and commonwealth to seek a new fortune in an 
alien land. 

Some biographers of Crockett accord to him in 
this act the motives of hold knight-errantry; yet 
impartial review of known facts leads one to be- 
lieve that Crockett's abandonment of his family 
and his somewhat erratic journey into Texas were 
most easily explicable by reasons of a plausible self- 
interest. He was seeking political advancement 
along lines of less resistance. Then, finding himself 
a member of a party of souls as adventurous as 
himself, souls reckless and unrestrained, ardent, 
eager, fearless, yet without a leader and without a 
definite plan, Crockett the backwoodsman, Crockett 
the thinker, the orator, the statesman, if you please, 
flings himself with the others into a needless and 
fatal fight, rages with them in the most glorious 
struggle yet chronicled in the pages of American 
history, fights like a Titan, dies like a gallant 
gentleman, helps write the shining history of that 
gqualid hut in old San Antonio, and makes possible 



DAVY CROCKETT 149 

one of the most burning sentences that ever adorned 
monument above hero's grave: "Thermopylae had 
three messengers of defeat; the Alamo had not one!" 

Here are contradictions that might be thought 
sufficient to give us pause; yet not contradictions 
large or conclusive enough to rob Davy Crockett of 
aught of the fame that has been accorded him 
by the American people. In order to reconcile or 
explain these contrarieties, and hence to understand 
this strange early American, we shall do well to 
review the better known and most authentic inci- 
dents of his peculiar career. 

Crockett does not go so far back in the history 
of the west-bound American as does Daniel Boone. 
The latter died at the age of eighty-six. Crockett, 
who died about ten years later than Boone, was 
but fifty years of age. His life falls in the trans- 
Mississippi period of the Western population move- 
ment. He was born August seventeenth, 1786, in 
Greene County, Tennessee. His grandfather was an 
Irishman who came to Pennsylvania, thence moved 
west in order to avail himself of the settlers' right 
of four hundred acres of land, which carried the pre- 
emption right of an additional one thousand acres. 
A goodly portion of a goodly earth lay ready to 
every man's hand in that day of American oppor- 
tunity. 



150 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

The second Crockett homestead, on the Holston 
Eiver, was broken up by the Indians, who killed the 
parents and several of the children, John Crockett, 
David's father, being one of the few that escaped. 
John Crockett became a Eevolutionary soldier, and 
after the Revolutionary War moved to North Caro- 
lina, just as did the father of Daniel Boone. 

Following the path of the earlier Argonaut, Boone, 
John Crockett in 1783 crossed the Alleghanies, but 
settled in eastern Tennessee, instead of Kentucky. In 
tliis wilderness David was born. It was a land with- 
out religion, without schools, without civilization. 
In such an environment the weaker children died. 
Naked as a little Indian, David Crockett ran about 
the rude cabin, and lived because he was fit to sur- 
vive. One of his earliest recollections is that of an 
incident in which his uncle, Joseph Hawkins, fig- 
ured. Hawkins accidentally shot one of the neigh- 
bors, the ball passing through his body. There was 
no surgical skill possible, and it was considered the 
proper thing in the treatment of this wound to pass 
a silk handkerchief, carried on the end of a ram- 
rod, from one end to the other of the wound. 
Crockett appears to have seen his father pull a silk 
handkerchief entirely through the body of this 
wounded neighbor. It was a strong breed, that of 
Tennessee a hundred vears ago! 











/ *#■ 



:.«6M Jl. 



EARLY PIONEERS ON THE BLUE KIDGE 



'^U 






DAVY CROCKETT 151 

Of course this settler must move west, and again 
west. At the fourth move of his life he located on 
Cove Creek, the boy Davy being now about eight 
years of age. About this time Crockett's father lost 
his grist-mill by fire. Naturally the remedy for this 
was to move, and he again took up his journey, 
settling this time on the road between Abingdon 
and Knowlton, where he opened a rude tavern, 
patronized mostly by teamsters of the roughest sort, — 
certainly a hard enough environment for the coming 
statesman. 

The earliest description of Crockett represents 
him to be '^Si wiry little fellow, athletic, with nerves 
of steel.'' Even in childhood he was given to fierce 
encounters, yet he was of an open and generous dis- 
position. He grew up practically without care, his 
father, if truth be told, being a man of somewhat 
gross and drunken habits. Davy finally, at the ma- 
ture age of thirteen, forsook the paternal roof and 
set out in the world for himself. 

He chanced fortune with drovers, driving cattle to 
the eastward, and learned to be hostler and general 
utility man, becoming acquainted with the trail that 
ran between Abingdon, Witheville and Charlottes- 
ville, Orange Court House and other points in Vir- 
ginia. He worked for a few months as a farm hand 



152 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

in Virginia. He wandered into Baltimore, with 
wonder noticed the shipping there, and came near 
becoming a sailor, but was rescued from that fate. 
Buffeted by fortune from pillar to post, he worked 
one month for a farmer at a wage of five dollars. He 
went apprentice to a hatter and worked for eighteen 
months for nothing, at the end of which time the 
hatter unfortunately failed in business. 

Poor Davy spent two years in these wanderings, 
and was fifteen years old when all at once he again 
dawned upon the paternal grounds in eastern Ten- 
nessee. These two years had been spent in consider- 
able physical discomfort and anguish of spirit, and 
the journey home was accomplished only after many 
dangers and difficulties. Crockett admits that at this 
time he did not know the letters of the alphabet. His 
father, shiftless as ever, had been lavish with his 
promissory notes. He offered Davy his "freedom" if 
he would work six months for a neighbor to whom he 
had given a note for forty dollars. Davy generously 
did so, and capped it off by working another six 
months and taking up another one of his father's 
notes, for thirty-six dollars. This last he was not 
obliged to do, yet in spite of these bitter surround- 
ings, there had flowered in the young savage's heart 
a certain feeling of family honor. 

Now all at once the boy backwoodsman became 



DAVY CROCKETT 153 

conscious of his own infirmities. He went to school 
six months, the only schooling he ever had in his 
life. He learned to write his name, to spell to 
some extent, to perform a few sim*ple snms in arith- 
metic. Twice hlighted in love at eighteen years of 
age, he married a pretty little Irish girl, a daughter 
of a neighboring family. "I know'd I would get 
her," says he, "if no one else did before next Thurs- 
day." 

Crockett was married in his moccasins, leggings 
and hunting shirt. His bride was dressed in linsey- 
woolsey. There was no jewelry. The table on which 
the wedding feasit was spread was made of a 
single slab. The platters were of wood, the spoons 
of pewter and of horn. In his own abode, as he 
first entered it, there was no bed and not a chair, 
a knife or a fork. Yet, after the expenditure of 
fifteen dollars, which he borrowed, Crockett and his 
wife "fixed the place up pretty grand," and found it 
good enough for them for some years. Here two 
boys were born to them. 

At the ripe age of twenty-one years, that is to say 
in the year 1806, Crockett considered it necessary 
for the betterment of his fortunes that he should 
remove farther toward the West, this having been 
the universal practice of his kind. He journeyed 
for four hundred miles through the Western wilder- 



154 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

ness, taking his family and household goods with 
him. Their transportation, as we are advised, con- 
sisted of one old horse and two colts. These animals 
were packed with the household goods. In the wild 
journey down the Holston the family, children and 
all, camped out, enduring the weather as best they 
might. At last they came to a halt on Mulberry 
Creek, in Lincoln County, in what they took to be 
the Promised Land. The soil was generously rich, 
game and fish were abundant, the climate was all 
that could be asked. Crockett built him a cabin, 
and here he lived for two years, much as he had lived 
in eastern Tennessee. Then, in the easy fashion of 
the time, he moved once more, this time settling 
in Franklin Countv, on Bear Creek, still in the wil- 
derness. 

Here we find him living in 1813, at which time 
the call went out for volunteers to serve in 
the Creek W^ar under General Jackson. Without 
much ado, Crockett said good-by to. his family, 
joining those wild irregular troops who, amid count- 
less hardships, plodded up and down the region of 
Alabama and Georgia, meeting the southern In- 
dians, destroying them wholesale or piecemeal as 
the case might be. Crockett marched, counter- 
marched, acted as spy and hunter, doing his full 
share of the work. 



DAVY CKOCKETT 155 

All the time he was rising in the esteem of his 
fellow men. He was now a tall, large-boned, 
muscular man. His hair, we are told, was sandy, 
his eyes blue, his nose straight, his mouth wide 
and merry; and so we see Davy Crockett the 
grown man. ^N'ever having known anything but 
hardship all his life, he has none the less never known 
anything but cheerfulness and content. The apt 
jest and catching story are always ready on his lips. 
He is the life of the camp-fire. Gradually he forges 
to the front. The qualities of leadership begin to 
appear. 

In all these rude military experiences, although 
Crockett does not fancy the revolting scenes which 
in some instances he witnesses at the Indian killings, 
he shows the ardent nature, the fighting soul. Hence 
he respects the fighting man and pays his obedience 
to General Jackson. There is no hint of that fatal 
falling out between the two men that later is so 
suddenly to terminate Crockett's ambitions. 

In 1822, after his return from this petty war, 
Crockett's fortunes once more needed mending, and 
the remedy, of course, was to move again. He had 
previously explored nearly all of Alabama, and 
later investigated southern Tennessee, finally locat- 
ing on Shoal Creek, in Giles County. Crockett's 



166 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

faithful wife, the little Irish woman, had died, and 
he, ever ready to console himself, now married a 
widow of the neighborhood, an estimable woman, who 
added two children to his already growing family. 
This second wife appears to have been a dignified 
and able woman. Little is known of her, and she 
seems to have lived the life of the average frontier 
woman, patiently and uncomplainingly following 
her lord and master in all his enterprises and his 
wanderings. Two pack-horses still served tx) trans- 
port all the family goods on this latest journey. 

The greed for land had rapidly sent a turbulent 
population into the Cherokee country of the "New 
Purchase" where Crockett now resided, and among 
these lawless souls restrictions were needed, although 
the country knew no law and had no courts. C:rock- 
ett was elected judge, without any commission and 
without any formal process of law. He served Avisely, 
and although unable to write a warrant, he some- 
times issued verbal warrants. He claimed that his 
decisions were always just and that they "stuck like 
wax." 

Meantime he had been elected colonel of militia 
over a bumptious rival. Now, all at once, and 
perhaps originally more as a matter of jest than 
anything else, as was the case in his second candi- 



DAVY CROCKETT 167 

dacy, Ins name came up for the legislature. Crock- 
ett inaugurated a canvass on lines of his own. In 
brief, he talked little of politics, for he knew nothing 
of such matters. He told a brief story, traded a 
'coon skin for a bottle of liquor, treated the crowd, 
j)romised to sell a wolf scalp and treat them again, 
and so passed on to the next gathering. lie was 
elected without difficulty. 

But of course misfortune once more must overtake 
our hero, and he must move again, this time as far 
as he can go and not cross the Mississippi River. 
This next home, and the last one he established, 
was made in the northwestern corner of Tennessee, 
on the Obion River, near the Mississippi River, not 
far from what is now known as Reel Foot Lake, 
and in the heart of that wild country then known 
as the "Shakes." 

This was near the submerged lands affected by the 
New Madrid earthquakes, a country naturally rich in 
many ways. It was a cane-brake country, a heavily 
timbered but somewhat broken region, crossed now 
and again by terrific windfalls locally known as 
"hurricanes." You may see such country in the 
Mississippi Delta to-day, two hundred miles south of 
Crockett's home. Crockett's neighbors on the Obion 
were three in number, respectively seven, fifteen and 
twenty miles distant. 



158 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

On his trip of exploration he planted his first crop 
of corn by means of a sharp stick, just as he had 
broken tlie earth at each of his earlier homes. He was 
rejoiced to find that the corn grew excellently, and 
yet more rejoiced to know that he had found a su- 
perb hunting ground. In his early life his game 
consisted chiefly of deer and turkey. Here bear, 
deer and turkey were very numerous, and there were 
also elk occasionally to be seen. The buffalo is 
never mentioned up to this time in Crockett's life, 
and that animal had probably by this time, 1822, 
become practically extinct in Kentucky and Mis- 
souri. 

Mr. J. S. C. Abbott, in his biography of Crock- 
ett, writes of his station at this time: "Most men, 
most women^ gazing upon a scene so wild, lonely 
and cheerless, would say, ^Let me sink into the grave 
rather than be doomed to such a home as this.' " 
Such is the point of view of the narrow observer that 
never knew his America. Not so Davy Crockett. 
He did not find this region lonely or cheerless. 
On the contrary, we find him fraternizing with the 
rude boatmen from points lower down on the 
Mississippi Eiver, and making himself very comfort- 
able. Presently he goes back after his family, 
bringing them on to his new home in October of that 
year. They and their belongings are transported 



DAVY CROCKETT 159 

by two horses, this limited cavalcade being still suf- 
ficient to carry all the worldly belongings of David 
Crockett, hunter, warrior, magistrate and legislator. 
Davy is still poor, but he does not wish to *^sink into 
the grave." On the contrary, as he journeys along 
the wild woodland path he sings, jests and whistles, 
happy as the birds about him, content am^ng the 
sweet mysteries of the untracked forests. He is 
the product of wild nature, as savage as the most 
savage, a man primeval, unfettered, free. He is the 
new man, the man of the west, the new-American. 

As an example of Crockett's early electioneering 
methods, we may cite his procedure in his first can- 
vass for the legislature. He says : 

"I didn't know what the government was. I 
didn't know but General Jackson was the govern- 
ment;" a statement not wholly the product of sar- 
casm. He met Colonel Polk, later President Polk, 
and according to his own story the colonel remarked : 

"It is possible we may have some changes in the 
judiciary." 

*^ery likely," replied Davy, "very likely," and 
discreetly withdrew. 

"Well," he comments, "if I know'd what he meant 
by ^judiciarj^,' I wish I may be shot. I never heard 
there was sucb a thing in all nature." 

Yet another electioneering story attributed to 



160 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

Crockett, perhaps authentic as many of those told re- 
garding him, shows well enough the rude temper of 
liis region, if we do not go further, and accord to it a 
certain hint of that native humor that was later to 
see its growth in America. 

^^I had taken old Betsy," says he, referring to 
his rifle, '^^and straggled off to the banks of the 
Mississippi Eiver, and meeting no game, I didn't like 
it. I felt mighty wolfish about the head and ears, 
and thought I'd spile if I wasn't kivvered in salt, 
for I hadn't had a fight in ten days. I cum acrost 
a fellow who was floatin' down-stream, settin' in the 
stern of his boat, fast asleep. Said I, '^Hello, 
stranger, if you don't take care your boat will get 
away from you;' and he looked up and said he, ^I 
don't value you.' He looked up at me slantendicu- 
lar, and I looked down at him slantendicular; and 
he took a chaw of turbaccur, and said he, ^I don't 
value you that much.' Said I, '^Come ashore. I can 
whip you. I've been tryin' to get a fight all the 
momin';' and the varmint flapped his wings like a 
chicken. I ris up, shook my mane, and neighed like a 
horse. 

"He run his boat plump head foremost ashore. I 
stood still and sot my triggers — that is, I took off 
my shirt, and tied my gallusses tight around my 
waist — and at it we went. He was a right smart 



DAVY CROCKETT 161 

'coon, but hardly a bait fer a feller like me. I put 
it to him mighty droll. In ten minutes he yelled 
enough, and swore I was a ripstaver. Said I, ^Ain't 
I the yaller flower of the forest? I'm all brimstone 
but the head and ears^ and that's aquafortis.' Said 
he, ^You're a beauty, and if I know'd yore name 
I'd vote for you next election.' Said I, Tm that 
same Davy Crockett. You know what I am made 
of. I've got the closest shootin' rifle, the best 'coon 
dog, the biggest bear tickler and the ruff est rackin' 
horse in the district. I can kill more likker, cool 
out more men, and fool more varmints than any 
man you can find in all Tennessee!' Said he, *^Good 
morning, stranger, I'm satisfied.' Said I, ^Good 
morning, sir; I feel much better since our meeting — 
don't forget about that vote." 

Congressmen to-day do not employ language quite 
so picturesque, or methods of vote-getting quite so 
crude. The story is a trifle apochryphal ; yet Crockett 
himself, in what is called his autobiography, a work 
which he no doubt dictated, or at least authorized, 
gives the following account of one of his speeches 
to a stranger, at Ealeigh, while Crockett was en 
route to Washington to take his first seat in Con- 
gress. 

"Said he, 'Hurrah for Adams!' and said I, 'Hur- 
rah for hell, and praise your own country!' And 



162 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

he said, 'Who are you?' Said 1, Tm that same 
Davy Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half 
horse, half alligator, a little touched with snapping 
turtle, can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride 
a streak of lightning, slide down a honey locust and 
not get scratched. I can whip my weight in wild- 
cats, hug a bear too close for comfort, and eat an}^ 
man opposed to Jackson/ " W^hich last remark he 
fain would qualify largely later in his political ca- 
reer! An innate shrewdness that told him how 
to avoid committing himself was Crockett's original 
capital in politics, as it was in life. His native wit, 
his good fellowship, his rollicking good humor, his 
courage and strength, his skill with weapons brought 
him success. He was fitted for success in those sur- 
roundings,. 

Crockett is always chronicled as one of the great 
American hunters, and this name he deserves. He 
was a good rifle-shot. In his cane-brake country he 
hunted the black bear just as it is hunted to-day in 
the similar country of the Mississippi Delta, by 
means of dogs, without which the hunter would only 
by the remotest chance ever get sight of an animal 
so shy as the black bear. 

Abbott, who seems to apologize for Crockett, needs 
for himself an apologist, for he displays a lamentable 
ignorance of the environment of which he writes, as 



DAVY CROrivETT 163 

well as of many common facts in natural history. As 
a matter of fact there was no risk whatever in the 
pursuit of the black bear, even when the hunter was 
not accompanied by his dogs, whose presence elimi- 
nated the last possible danger of the chase. In those 
days the rifle was a single-shot muzzle-loader, in 
no wise so effective as the modern hunting arm, 
but even thus early in the history of American wild 
game, the black bear had ceased to be a formidable 
animal, if indeed he ever was such.* 

Abbott, with gross and indeed singular inaccuracy, 
repeatedly speaks of Crockett as killing the "grizzly 
bear" and he mentions the "shaggy skins" of these 
"ferocious animals." In reality Davy Crockett saw 
nothing but the flat, smooth hides of the common 
black bear of the South, one of the most cowardly ani- 
mals that ever lived. He killed numbers of them, 
and enjoyed the vociferous chase with his hounds. 
Sometimes he did not need to use the rifle, but 
killed the bear with the knife, a feat often repeated 
by men of the present generation in the cane-brake 
hunting of the South. 

Crockett mentions killing one bear that weighed 
six hundred and seventeen pounds, and he speaks of 



♦The black bears which fed on the corpses left on the field of 
Braddock's Defeat became for a time bold and somewhat fearless 
of man. 



164 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

another that he thinks weighed six hundred pounds. 
In one hunt of two weeks he killed fifteen bears. Once 
he killed three bears in half an hour, and at another 
time six in one day, with an additional four on the 
following day. In one week the total was seventeen 
bears, and in the next hunt he speaks of killing ten 
of the same animals. He states that he killed fifty- 
eight bears in the fall and winter of that year, and in 
one month of the following spring he added forty- 
seven bears to his score, a total of a hundred and five 
killed in less than one year. In all he killed several 
hundred bears, very many deer and countless small 
game. He was a benefactor to all the poor laboring 
folk that lived anywhere near him, and speaks of 
giving one poverty-stricken neighbor a thousand 
pounds of meat, the product of his rifle during a few 
hours of one afternoon.* 

There never was a land more fruitful in animal 
life than this South which supported the early West- 
erners. In such surroundings life was a simple mat- 
ter. J^he chase and the rude field of com offered 
sufficient returns to satisfy the frontiersman. 



♦These stories are not to be doubted, and are not especially- 
wonderful. The writer has often hunted in Mississippi with a 
planter, Colonel R. E. Bobo, who more than equalled all of 
Crockett's records. In one year, soon after his first arrival in 
Coahoma County, Mississippi, Colonel Bobo killed two hundred 
and six bears. The writer was present when ten bears were 
killed in eight days. 



DAVY CROCKETT 165 

One day as Crockett happened to be in a settle- 
ment, some forty miles from his home, it was sug- 
gested that he run once more for the legislature. 
He agreed, and forthwith announced himself as can- 
didate. His early methods were again successful. 
Discovering in himiself now certain latent powers 
whose existence he had not suspected, he later agreed 
to run for Congress, but was defeated by his late 
supporter and friend, Colonel Alexander, by the 
scant margin of two votes. Cotton was high, and 
Alexander said it was because of the 1824 tariff. 
Davy did not know what the tariff was, and could 
not answer! 

Crockett at this time is described as a "finely pro- 
portioned man, about six feet high, forty-five years 
of age, of very frank, pleasing and open counte- 
nance." He was dressed in homespun and wore 
a black fur cap on his head, when seen by a traveler 
who met him at his house. He now began to show 
'^an unusual strength of mind and a memory almost 
miraculous." Uncultured, ignorant, terribly handi- 
capped by lack of training and opportunity, he over- 
came it all. He got his ammunition from the 
enemy. He received his sole political education 
from his opponent's political speeches, as witness 
his second campaign for Congress. Cotton dropped 
in price, Davy promptly found that the tariff argu- 



166 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

ment would work both ways, and he took his advan- 
tage. He was elected to Congress, and re-elected, the 
second victory showing a majority of three thousand 
five hundred votes. 

It is at this stage of his career that we may speak 
of the birth of the second or real David Crockett. 
These wild surroundings have now begotten in him a 
rugged sense of self-reliance and a personal independ- 
ence that henceforth manifest themselves unmistak- 
ably. He is a politician, but an independent politician. 
"I would as soon be a 'coon dog as to be obliged 
to do what any man or set of men told me to do," 
he says. "I will pledge myself to support no admin- 
istration." "I would rather be politically dead than 
hypocritically immortalized," he declares; and in yet 
another instance he says that he ^Vill not submit 
to the party gee-whoa-haw;" that he will be "no 
man's man, and no party's man." 

In spite of all these personal dicta he is elected. 
His election costs one hundred and fifty dollars, all 
in borrowed money. It costs David Crockett, con- 
gressman, an additional one hundred dollars, also 
borrowed, to get to the national Capitol at Washing- 
ton, where he arrives perhaps the most unique speci- 
men of Congressman ever produced in this broad 
land of ours. His first act is to pay his debts — which 
not all Congressmen since then have done so prompt- 



DAVY CKOCKETT 167 

ly. It is hard for the backwoods congressman at 
Washington, yet he has good sense, good tact, good- 
nature and a magnetic temperament. His motto, 
"Be sure you are right, then go ahead," wins for him 
sudden fame. Perhaps it is fame too sudden. Now 
we must bid good-by to Davy Crockett, bear hunter. 
He is bitten of the fatal poison of political ambition. 
From this time on the record of his life is for a while 
public, plain and well known. 

. Crockett was a Southerner and, as has been stated, 
at first a friend of the Jacksonian Democracy. 
Naturally he should have been expected to prove 
loyal to the doctrines of the South, and the South 
at that time was held in the hollow of Old Hickory's 
hand. Note now a sudden sternness of fiber in 
the bear hunter's character that entitles him to a 
better name than that of time-serving politician. 
As a matter of conviction and principle he differs 
from the autocratic leader then sitting in the presi- 
dent's chair. He opposes President Jackson's In- 
dian bill, and the proposition to withdraw the de- 
posits from tlie United States banks. Indeed, in- 
stead of being a follower of Jackson, he comes out 
boldly as an opponent of his former leader. 

The North hails him joyously as a Southerner with 
a Whig heart. Let Davy make the most of it ; none the 
less he loses the next contest for Congress in his 



168 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

district. Yet lie fights again, gets the nomination 
for the next term, wins once more and hastens rap- 
idly toward the height of a national popularity. Re- 
alizing his own ignorance of the North and East, in 
1834 he undertakes a journey to those sections. At 
Baltimore he sees a railroad for the first time in 
his life, and witnesses the tremendous feat of seven- 
teen miles made by a railway train in the time of 
fifty-five minutes! At Philadelphia crowds meet him 
at the wharf and cheer him to the echo. He is 
banqueted repeatedly, wined and dined times with- 
out number, and made the recipient of countless 
attentions. The young Whigs of Philadelphia come 
close to his heart when they make him a present 
of a fine rifle, the very rifle that took the place of 
"Old Betsy'^ and was with Crockett in his last fight 
at the Alamo. 

In New York, in Boston and the larger manu- 
facturing towns of Massachusetts, Crockett repeats 
his Philadelphia triumphs. He is now a national 
figure. His sayings and doings are quoted through- 
out the land. If his Northern speeches are cor- 
rectly reported, he has at this time suddenly be- 
come the possessor of an easy and not undignified 
oratorical style, though all his speeches are still 
well sprinkled with quaint epigrams and homely illus- 
trations, 



DAVY CROCKETT 1G9 

We see in the Crockett of 1834 a figure not ap- 
proached by any other American statesman so nearly 
as by that other rugged AVesterner, Abraham Lincoln. 
These crude, virile, tremendous, human men, product 
of the soil, born of the hard ground and the blue sky 
— how they do appeal, how they do grow, how they 
do succeed. 

Crockett is asked to visit Harvard College, but 
refuses for quaint reasons of his own. Andrew Jack- 
son has been made an LL. D. by Harvard, and 
Crockett says that "one LL. D. is enough for Tennes- 
see.^' He is the guest of Lieutenant-governor Arm- 
strong, and chronicles naive surprise that Mr. Arm- 
strong "did not charge him anything,^' for entertain- 
ing him. He states that in Xew England he 
found "more liberality than the Yankee generally 
gets credit for.'' He expresses his gratitude for the 
kindly reception accorded him in New England and 
chronicles his admiration for the thrift and industry 
of that country, which seems to have made a vivid 
impression on his mind, different as these scenes 
were from the wild surroundings in which he himself 
had grown up. 

This trip into the North wrought epochal change 
for our bear hunter. He learns now about the tariff, 
studies and approves the doctrines of protection — 
rank heresy for a Southerner. Deep water for Davy 



irO THE WAY TO THE WEST 

now ! He seems to have had no counsel of prudence, 
for now he loses no opportunity to chronicle his ani- 
mosity toward General Jackson. 

"Hero — that is a name that ought to he first in 
war and last in peace," says he. Commenting on 
the faithlessness of the government, he flames out: 
"I had considered a treaty as the sovereign law of 
the land, and now I hear it considered as a matter 
of expedience." This was in reference to the treat- 
ment accorded the southern Indians by the United 
States government. 

^This thing of man-worship I am a stranger to," 
says he, with personal allusion, of course, to Jack- 
son. In all these sayings he is, it may naturally be 
supposed, heartily applauded by the Northerners, 
who rejoice in this notable accession to their own 
ranks. 

Davy Crockett, bear hunter and congressman, 
has now had his chance. He takes himself seri- 
ously, even when he jokes about his being the next 
president of the United States. Crockett repre- 
sents now the success of perfect digestion, of the 
perfectly normal nervous system. Nothing irritates 
him. The world to him runs smoothly, as it does 
to any hardy animal. He cares not for the past 
and has no concern for the physical future. His 
big brain, so long fallow, so long unstirred, begins 



DxVVY CROCKETT 171 

now to fill up with thoughts and ideas and compari- 
sons and conclusions. His reason is clear and 
bright. He presents to the world the startling specta- 
cle of a middle-aged man educating himself to the 
point of an intelligent statesmanship, and that within 
the space of a few brief months or years. He displays 
a clarity of vision nothing short of marvelous. His 
memory of names, of dates and data is something 
startling. The world of books remains closed to him, 
so that he learns by ear, like a child, but he surprises 
friends and foes alike. The husk of the chrysalis 
has been broken. The Westerner has been born into 
the American! 

Davy Crockett had thus far never met any dan- 
ger of a nature to inspire fear, any difficulty he 
could not overcome, any hardship he could not 
lightly endure. He now encountered one enemy 
greater than any to be met with in the wilderness — 
that great and menacing foe, the political machine. 
He found to his sorrow that honor and manhood will 
not always serve, and at the summit of his success he 
met his first and irremediable defeat. 

Crockett, once the politician, now grown into Crock- 
ett the eager student, the earnest statesman, had 
stirred up animosities too great for him to overcome. 
The relentless hand of Jackson smote hard upon 
Crockett's district. There was talk of money, and of 



172 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

votes influenced by its use. Poor Davy, who went into 
this last campaign of Congress as blithely and as sure 
of success as ever in his life, learned that he had been 
defeated by a total of two hundred and thirty votes ! 
Then there arose from the honest and generous soul 
of this strange child of the wilderness a great and 
bitter cry. He was among the first to exclaim against 
the creed of politics pursued as politics, of statesman- 
ship that is not statesmanship — ^the creed of party 
and not of manhood. 

"As my country no longer requires my services," 
he writes, "I have made up my mind to leave it." 
Expressing his determination forthwith to leave Ten- 
nessee and to start for the distant land of Texas, he 
says, "I have a new row to hoe, a long and rough 
one; but I will go ahead." He adds as quaintly as 
ever, "I told my constituents they might all go to 
hell, and I would go to Texas." 

We come now to the third and closing stage of 
the life of David Crockett, and in order to under- 
stand it we must bear in mind the nature of the 
opinions then current concerning the new land that 
to the Southerners of that time was "The Great 
West," the land beyond the Mississippi. Texas, a 
magnificent realm eight hundred and twenty-five by 
seven hundred and forty-five miles in extent, already 
had an American population of nearly forty thou- 



DAVY CROCKETT 173 

sand; and of all wild populations ever gathered 
together at any place or time of the world, this 
was perhaps the wildest and the most indomitable. 
There was hardly a soul within the borders of that 
great land w^ho was not a fighting man and who had 
not come to take his fighting chance. It was fate 
that Davy Crockett should drift into this far South- 
west and take his chances also. 

As to the chances of it, they were not so bad. 
It was almost sure that Texas would ultimately be 
won from Mexico. In 1813 an expedition of Ameri- 
cans had fought Spain and killed some hundreds of 
Spaniards, on the strength of the general claim that 
the territory of Louisiana extended westward as far 
as the Rio Grande, and not merely to the neighborhood 
of the Sabine River, as was claimed by Spain. The 
latter river was in 1819 generally accepted as the 
boundary line, but this fact did not serve to stop 
the Americans. 

In 1823 Stephen A.Austin was settling his Mexican 
grant with his new colony. These families drew after 
them the inevitable train of relatives and friends, so 
that the great River Road to the South and South- 
west soon began to be pressed by the feet of many 
pilgrims. In 1821 Lafitte made his rough settlement 
at Galveston, and the pirates of Lafitte were no worse 
than the average Texas population of that time. 



174 TPTE WAY TO THE WEST 

There were no schools, no courts, no law. One writer 
states that he sat at breakfast with eleven men, each 
of whom had pending against him in another state 
a charge of murder. Then originated the etiquette 
of the wild West that demanded that no one should 
inquire into his neighbor's past, nor ask his earlier 
name. 

In 1833 there were twenty thousand Americans that 
wished Texas to have an organization separate from 
the state of Coahuila. They were not so particular 
as to what government claimed their state, but 
they wished to organize and run it for themselves. 
Meeting a natural opposition from Mexico in this 
enterprise, in the year 1835 they banded their 
forces, overturned the Mexican government, and 
set up a proAasional government of their own. Henry 
Smith was chosen provisional governor and Sam 
Houston commander-in-chief of this wildest of all 
American republics. 

On December twentieth, 1835, these Texans issued 
their proclamation of independence, some sixty 
years after the Declaration of the American Inde- 
pendence. This meant but one thing. Santa 
Anna, then as much as anybody governor of affairs 
in Mexico, marched with an army, stated to have 
numbered seven thousand five hundred men, to be- 
siege the Texans, whose main body was located at 



DAVY CROCKETT 175 

San Antonio. !N'o American doubted the ultimate 
issue. All the South knew that the wild and hardy 
population of this new region would beat back the 
weak Latin tenants of the soil. The matter was well 
discussed and well understood. It was not knight- 
errantry, therefore, so much as politics, that led Davy 
Crockett southward into this wild hornets' nest. 
Eather sJiould we say that all this movement was part 
of the mighty, inexplicable, fateful, irresistible Anglo- 
Saxon pilgrimage across this continent. It was a 
New World. These new men were those fitted to 
occupy and hold it. 

At this time the historian of Crockett falls on 
a curious difficulty. There is published what pur- 
ports to be an autobiography of David Crockett's 
life, a linsey-woolsey affair, made up partly of good 
English and partly of rough backwoods idiom such 
as we are accustomed to associate with the speech 
of this singular man. This "autobiography" pur- 
ports to be continued after Crockett leaves his Ten- 
nessee home for far-off Texas. Yet at this point its 
style and subject matter assume such shape as to 
lead one inevitably to conclude that Crockett did 
not write it. There are many contradictions and 
discrepancies, and much of the detailed story of 
Crockett's wanderings in the Southwest is denied by 
practically the only eye-witness of the time qualified 



176 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

to tell of his experiences — that Jonathan H. Greene 
(the "Harrington" of Crockett's correspondence), 
once gambler and later reformed man, who was with 
Crockett for a time before the Alamo fight. Greene's 
story does not in all points tally with the so- 
called autobiography of Crockett, nor with many of 
the popular histories of his life. 

In general it may be determined that, with some 
feeling but without much ado, Crockett said farewell 
to his wife and family. He had no longer heart for 
bear hunting. He wished a wider field of life. His 
journey was down the Mississippi and up the Arkan- 
sas River to Little Rock. There he encountered many 
hail-fellows-well-met, and had several experiences, 
which are set forth at length in his autobiography. 
He journeyed then horseback to Fulton, descended 
the Red River to Natchitoches and thence made his 
way westward across Texas. 

The so-called autobiography of Crockett describes 
two or three strange characters : the "Bee Hunter," 
who might have been the hero of an English melo- 
drama of the time; "Thimblerig," the sharper whom 
Crockett reforms and leads on to die a hero's death; 
the "Pirate," who dies in front of the Alamo gate; 
and so on. There is something strangely unreal in 
much of this. It does not ring true. Yet we are 
further told that Crockett crossed the Sabine, that he 



DAVY CROCKETT " 177 

met the Comanches, that he saw for the first time 
the tremendous herds of buffalo, that he encountered 
bands of wild horses, that he saw much wild game, 
and in a knife fight killed a panther. The feeling 
is irresistible that many of these pictures are made 
to order. 

At last, however, without much ado and without 
any adequate explanation of Crockett's real motives, 
we find him inside the gates of the San Antonio 
barracks, one of that little party whose heroic death 
was to set the whole American nation a-throb, first 
with vengeful fire, and then with a passionate love 
and admiration. 

The situation was thus: Travis in San Antonio, 
practically hemmed in at the adobe building known 
as the Alamo: Fannin at Goliad, with other noble 
fellows later to fall victims to Mexican treachery; 
at a distance Sam Houston, apparently irresolute 
and non-committal. Austin, Fannin, Travis, Eush, 
James Bowie, the Whartons, Archer of Virginia — 
what a list of strong names was here, these fight- 
ing men, some of whom had come for politics, some 
for sport, some for sheer love of danger and adven- 
ture. Of these, Bowie, Crockett, Fannin and Travis 
might have been declared opposed to the party of 
Houston and Austin. Crockett's authentic letter 
bitterly accuses Houston, the leader of the Texans. 



178 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

Houston, mysterious, vain, enigmatical, as able as 
lie was erratic, might periiaps, had his followers 
been less tempestuous and independent, have united 
them into a harmonious and powerful whole. He 
could not, or did not. Hence came the Alamo fight. 

Of this wild army, half ruffian, half adventurous, 
most of the men were poor, although they came 
in many cases from good families. They had behind 
them an undeniable sentiment in favor of the inde- 
pendence of Texas, and were backed by money raised 
for that purpose. General Jackson openly and no- 
toriously favored the annexation of Texas, and per- 
haps even of Mexico, and went so far as to suggest 
a few practical though unauthorized plans of his 
own as to how the army might be used to bring 
about a conflict and later a jxix Jacksonii. Thus 
we find our hero, Davy Crockett, once more fall- 
ing into the plans of his former chief, his recently 
victorious antagonist. Old Hickory. 

It is possible that Crockett was deceived in his 
pilgrimage to Texas. There is more than a suspicion 
that he was used as a cat's paw in a political move- 
ment. He says that "Houston is enjoying the support 
of the Government, while others are left to do the 
fighting." He continues, "Houston has dealt with us 
in prevarications." He calls Houston the "agent" and 
Jackson the "manufacturer," Yet certainly Crockett 



DAVY CROCKETT iro 

was backed by a prevalent and strongly growing sen- 
timent. The records are too vague and insufficient. 
We shall never fully understand all these compli- 
cations of early and adventurous politics. 

Be all these things as they may, Crockett was one 
of the devoted little band of a hundred and eighty- 
three Texans, who in time found themselves besieged 
by an army of Mexicans from five thousand to eight 
thousand strong. The peons of Santa Anna's worth- 
less army came on day after day, the bands playing 
the Dequelo, which meant "no quarter." For 
eleven days the Texans held the Alamo, in that his- 
toric fight whose details are so generally and so un- 
certainly known. These one hundred and eighty- 
three men killed of the enemy more than one thou- 
sand. Worn out by loss of sleep and continuous 
muscular exertion, their arms simply grew weary 
from much slaying. Their hands could no longer 
push down the ladders weighted with the struggling 
peons goaded forward by the swords of their officers. 

At length an assault was lodged. The swart Mexi- 
cans, more in terror than in exultation, poured across 
the broken wall. In the hospital lay forty helpless 
men, each with his rifle at his side. These, sick and 
crippled, broken-bodied, iron-hearted, poured their 
last volley into their assailants as they came in. A 
cannon was discharged down the room and nearly a 



180 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

score of the crippled and sick were blown to piec^, 
Outside, in the open space, the lances of the Mexi 
cans reached farther than the clubbed rifles or the 
bitter, biting knives of the stalwart Americans, now 
raging in their last tremendous, magnificent and 
awful Baresark rage. 

N'o on^ Knows the story of the end. Even the 
number of the victims is matter of dispute to-day. 
Some say there were a hundred and eighty-three de- 
fenders, some say a hundred and eighty-six. Some 
say one woman escaped; s'ome say two. Some 
declare that one negro servant got away; some say 
two. The state of Texas adopted the "Alamo baby," 
but the Alamo baby did not see Crockett fall. There 
are different reports. Some state that there were 
six Americans left hemmed up against the wall, 
and that the Mexican general, Castrillon, called 
upon them to surrender. They did so, Crockett 
being one of the six. Confronting the Mexican 
commander, they were treacherously ordered to be 
shot down. It is said that Crockett, bowie knife 
in hand, sprang with all his force for the throat 
of the Mexican general, but was cut down or shot 
down with the others, 'Tiis face even in death 
wreathed in an expression of contempt and scorn 
at such treachery." 

All this is but imagination ; and there is all reason 



DAVY CROCKETT 181 

to suppose that there never was any surrender of these 
six last survivors. The commoner story is that Crock- 
ett fought to the last with his broken rifle, and was 
killed against the wall, before him lying the bodies of 
some twenty Mexicans. The usual impression is that 
he killed these twenty Mexicans himself before he 
was cut down, but this is perhaps the result of 
emotional writing. No one knows how many foes 
had fallen to his arm. No one can tell how many 
Mexicans each of these raging, fighting men de- 
stroyed before he himself went down. Earlier in 
the siege Crockett recounts picking off five can- 
noneers one after the other. He tells how the Bee 
Hunter and Thimblerig did their sharpshooting, how 
the Pirate died of wounds received in a sortie, how 
•the Bee Hunter — a most unlikely thing — burst into 
poesy and song at the hoisting of the Texas flag. 
Some of these things have too unreal a sound. There 
is something not quite Crockett, though a la Crockett, 
in the conclusion of Crockett's so-called, or rather 
alleged, diary: 

"March 5. — Pop, pop, pop! Bom, bom, bom! 
throughout the day. No time for memorandums 
now. Go ahead. Liberty and independence for- 
ever!" 

These are the last recorded words of dear Davy 
Crockett. It is probable in the extreme that he 



182 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

never wrote them. It is unlikely to an equal degree 
that, in all the turmoil of the Alamo fight, he could 
deliberately have kept a diary, or that it could have 
been preserved after all the horrible details of that 
bloody and disastrous conflict. As to the end of 
Davy Crockett, there is and has been no living hu- 
man being who could speak with absolute accuracy 
and authenticity. Bloody San Jacinto, the field 
where the cry ^'Remember the Alamo!" was the 
watchword of a dire and just revenge, left but few 
Mexican eye-witnesses of the Alamo. 

Be that as it may, we know that Davy Crockett died 
fighting, that he died with his face to the enemy, like 
the brave man that he was, undaunted, unafraid. No 
politics now, no statesmanship^ no little ambitions 
now for Davy Crockett. He was once more the child 
of the wilderness, stark, savage, exultant, dreadful, 
one more of those Titanic characters that swept away 
a weaker population, beat down all opposition, con- 
quered the American wilderness and made way for an 
American civilization. 

The study of Crockett's life shows us an America 
yet loose and scattered, not knit together into a na- 
tional whole; and the political problems of that day 
were still those arising from geography. Backwoods 
Davy was after all not so poor a thinker, nor so far 



DAVY CROCKETT 183 

from getting to tlie marrow of things. After his 
visit to the North, and his reconciliation to the doc- 
trines of a protective tariff, he makes one comment 
which, while it may not settle political argument, 
ought to teach a national courtesy and a human 
tolerance on both sides in any national difference. 

"If Southerners would visit the North," he says, 
"it would give different ideas to them who have been 
deluded and spoken in strong terms of dissolving the 
Union." A trifle ungrammatical this, perhaps, but 
startling reading, when one remembers that it was 
recorded in 1834. Again we find our independent 
thinker discussing freely the questions of transporta- 
tion, which were then and always have been so im- 
portant in this country. He was opposed to Jackson 
in the first place because Jackson "vetoed the bill for 
the Maysville road." He was opposed to Van Buren 
because he "voted against the. continuance of the na- 
tional road through Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, and 
against appropriations for its preservation." He op- 
posed Van Buren further because he "voted in favor 
of toll gates on the national road, demanding a 
tribute from the West for the right to pass on her own 
highways, constructed out of her own money, — a 
thing never heard of before." 

Crockett's changes of residence, ever drifting far- 
ther to the westward in his native state, and his 



184 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

final long pilgrimage to the Southwest, where he 
certainly, though his autobiography does not so state, 
visited different parts of Tfexas and the Indian na- 
tions, is index of the tendency of the times. The 
West of that day is the South of to-day. Thus, a 
writer of 1834 states, "The West is settled by repre- 
sentatives from every country, but it is very largely 
indebted for its inhabitants to Virginia, Georgia and 
the two Carolinas." History and our census maps 
show us that the day of the upper West was yet 
to come. Boone and his like had led across the 
Appalachians. Crockett and his like had crossed 
the Mississippi. The march toward the Eockies was 
now steadily and determinedly begun, under what 
difficulties and with what results we shall presently 
observe. 



CHAPTER II 

AGAINST THE WATERS* 

In 1810 the Western frontier of the United 
States slanted like the roof of a house from Maine 
to Louisiana. The center of population was almost 
exactly on the site of the city of Washington. 
The West was a distinct section^ and it was a sec- 
tion that had begun to develop an aristocracy. We 
still wore linsey-woolsey in Kentucky; still pounded 
our com in a hollow stump in Ohio; still killed our 
Indians with the ancient weapon of our fathers; 
still took our produce to New Orleans in flat-boats; 
still were primitive in many ways. 

None the less we had among us an aristocrat, a man 
who classified himself as better than his fellow men. 
There had been born that early captain of transporta- 
tion, the keel-boatman, the man that could go up- 
stream. The latter had for the stationary or semi- 
stationary man a vast and genuine contempt, as 
nomad man has ever had for the man of anchored 
habit. There was warrant for this feeling of 
superiority, for the keel-boat epoch was a great one 



>The Century Magazine, December, 1901. 
185 



186 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

in American history. Had this clumsy craft never 
been supplanted by the steamboat, its victories would 
have been of greater value to America than all the 
triumphs she ever won on the seas. 

As for the keel-boatmen themselves, they were 
a hardy, wild, and reckless breed. They spent their 
days in the blazing sun, their heads drooping over 
the setting-pole, their feet steadily trudging the 
walking-boards of their great vessels from morning 
until night and day after day* A wild life, a merry 
one, and a brief, was that lived by this peculiar 
class of men, who made characters for one of the 
vivid chapters in the tale of the early West. 

The men of the West had solved in some rude 
way the problem of getting up-stream, though 
still they clung to the highways of nature, the water- 
courses. The men of the ax and rifle had once 
more broken over the ultimate barriers assigned to 
themv by the men of book and gown. That myste- 
rious land beyond the Mississippi was even then 
receiving more and more of that adventurous popu- 
lation that the statesmen of the Louisiana Pur- 
chase feared would leave the East and never would 
return. 

The fur traders of St. Louis had found a way 
to reach the Eockies. The adventurous West was 
once more blazing a trail for the commercial and 



AGAINST THE WATERS 187 

industrial West to follow. This was the second 
outward setting of the tide of west-bound travel. 
We had used up all our down-stream transportation, 
and we had taken over, and were beginning to use, 
all the trails that led into the West, all the old 
French trails, the old Spanish trails, the trails that 
led out with the sun. No more war parties now 
from the Great Lakes to the Ohio, from the Great 
Lakes to the Mississippi. This was our country. 
We held the roads. 

But now there were happening yet other strange 
and startling things. In 1806, at Pittsburg, some 
persons built the first steamboat ever seen on the 
Ohio Eiver. Its first trip was the occasion of much 
rejoicing, and was celebrated with fervor, which, 
however, must have received a certain dampening 
by the outcome of the experiment. The boat, 
crowded with excited spectators, ran very hand- 
somely down-stream, but when it essayed to return 
the current proved too strong, and only setting-poles 
and rowboats saved the day. This, then, was the 
precursor of an aristocracy in transportation before 
which even the haughty keel-boatmen were obliged 
to abase themselves. In 1811 the steamer New 
Orleans was built at Pittsburg, and following the 
guidance of "Mr. Roosevelt of New York," who had 
previously investigated the matter, successfully ran 



188 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

tlie riverway to Xew Orleans.* More than that, she 
proved able to return up-stream.f What fate then 
was left for the keel-boats? 

In 1819 a steamboat had appeared as far west on 
the Great Lakes as Mackinaw. In 1826 a steamboat 
reached Lake Michigan. In 1828 the first steamboat 
of the American Fur Company mastered the turbid 
flood of the Missouri, and ascended that stream as 
far as the Great Falls. t In 1832 a steamboat ar- 



♦Nicholas J. Roosevelt, a great-uncle of President Theodore 
Roosevelt, was one of the owners of the New Orleans, and com- 
manded her on the historic voyage down the Mississippi, it be- 
ing the honeymoon trip for Mr. Roosevelt and his bride. Eventful 
enough it proved, this early voyage. As though in protest at 
this invasion of its sanctity, the wilderness broke out in cata- 
clysmic revolt. The great New Madrid earthquake, which changed 
the contour of hundreds of miles of Mississippi valley lands, 
greeted the vessel upon its first night on the great river. "A 
strange, weird, thrilling moan or high keyed sigh swept tremu- 
lously across the forest and cane-brakes, ending in a tremendous 
shriek, which again dropped to a long, low moan." This tre- 
mendous warning was followed by the quaking, the upheaval 
and the subsidence of the earth in such fashion that the course 
of the mighty Mississippi itself was for the time reversed, and 
afterward forever altered, while vast forests were sunk like 
so many ranks of toys. A great tidal wave swept the New Or- 
leans from her moorings, and Roosevelt and his wife barely es- 
caped with life. The end of an older world and the beginning of 
a new had indeed come. 

This first river-steamer was 116 feet over all, with twenty- 
feet beam, and was of only 400 tons burden; strange precursor 
of the swift and beautiful river-racers that were soon to follow, 
whose keen, trim hulls and dazzlingly ornamented superstructures 
were ere long to house another phase of transportation. 

tNaturally, the down-stream and up-stream eras overlapped. 
Thus the cypress rafting of the Mississippi Delta, down the Sun- 
flower and Yazoo rivers and to the port of New Orleans, was at 
its height in the years 1842-44. The rivers will ever remain the 
great downhill highways for heavy freight. 

$The Independence, of Louisville, Ky., ascended the Missouri 
as high as Booneville, Mo., in 1814. 



AGAINST THE WATERS 189 

rived at the city of Gliieago. The West was now 
becoming very much a country of itself. 

The curious fact continued to be fact — that it 
was the South that was to open, the North and 
the East that were to occupy. Of the two essential 
tools, the Southern man might have left at home his 
ax, the Northern man his rifle. But it was as yet 
no time for a North or a South. The Northerners 
and the Southerners both became Westerners, and 
if the ax followed the rifle, the plow as swiftly came 
behind the ax. 

Thanks to the man that could go up-stream, corn 
was no longer worth one hundred and sixty-five dol- 
lars a bushel anywhere in America. Corn was worth 
fifty cents a bushel, and calico was worth fifty cents 
a yard, at the city of Kaskaskia, in the heart of the 
Mississippi valley. Kaskaskia, the ancient, was queen 
of the down-stream trade in her day. She was im- 
portant enough to command a visit from Greneral 
Lafayette, early in this century; and the governor of 
Illinois addressed the distinguished visitor with an 
oratory not without interest, since it was alike full 
of bombast, of error, of truth, and of prophecy : 

"Sir, when the waters of the Mississippi, genera- 
tions hence, are traversed by carriers of commerce 
from all parts of the world; when there shall live 
west of the Father of Waters a people greater in 



190 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

numbers than the present population of the United 
States; when, sir, the power of England, always 
malevolent, shall have waned to nothing, and the 
eagles and stars of our national arms be recognized 
and honored in all parts of the globe; when the old 
men and the children of to-day shall have been 
gathered to their fathers, and their graves have been 
obliterated from the face of the earth, Kaskaskia 
will still remember and honor your name. Sir, as 
the commercial queen of the West, she welcomes 
you to a place within her portals. So long as Kas- 
kaskia exists, your name and praises shall be sung 
by her." 

To-day Kaskaskia is forgotten. The conditions 
that produced her have long since disappeared. 
The waters, in pity, have literally washed her away 
and buried her far in the southern sea. Yet Kas- 
kaskia serves admirably as a measuring point for 
the West of that day. She stood at the edge of 
civilization on the one hand, of barbarism on the 
other. Beyond her lay a land as unknown as the 
surface of the moon, a land that offered alike 
temptation and promise. Calico was worth fifty 
cents a yard at Kaskaskia; it was worth three dollars 
a yard in Santa Ee. A beaver skin was worth three 
dollars in Xew York; it was worth fifty cents at 
the head of the Missouri. 



AGAINST THE WATERS 191 

Tliere you have the problems of the men of 1810, 
and that, in a nutshell, is the West of 1810, 1820, 
1830. The problem was then, as now, how to trans- 
port a finished product into a new country, a raw 
product back into an old country, and a population 
between the two countries. There sprang up then, 
in this second era of American transportation, that 
mighty commerce of the prairies, which, carried on 
under the name of trade, furnished one of the boldest 
commercial romances of the earth. Fostered by mer- 
chants, it was captained and carried on by heroes, and 
was dependent upon a daily heroism such as com- 
merce has never seen anywhere except in the Ameri- 
can West. The Kit C arsons now took the place of 
the Simon Kentons, the Bill Williamses, of the Daniel 
Boones. The Western scout, the trapper, the hunter, 
wild and solitary figures, took prominent place on the 
nation's canvas. 

This W^estern commerce, the wagon freighting, 
steamboating, and packing, of the first half of this 
century, was to run in three great channels, each 
distinct from the other. First there was the fur 
trade, whose birth was in the North. Next there 
was the trade of mercantile ventures to the far 
Southwest. Lastly there was to grow up the freight- 
ing trade to the mining regions of the West. The 



192 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

cattle-growing, fanning, or comimercial West of 
to-day was still a thing undreamed. 

In every one of these three great lines of activity 
we may still note what we may call the curiously 
individual quality of the West. The conditions of 
life, of trade, of any endurance on the soil, made 
heavy demands upon the physical man. There must, 
above all things, be strength, hardihood, courage. 
There were gi'eat companies in commerce, it is true, 
but there were no great corporations to safeguard 
the persons of those transported. Each man must 
"take care of himself," as the peculiar and significant 
phrase went. "Good-by; take care of yourself," was 
the last word for the man departing to the West.* 

The strong legs of himself and his horse, the strong 



*As witness the following from the record of an early prairie 
Journey: "Our route lay through all that vast extent of country 
then known as Dakota, including the territories, since formed, 
of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, and a portion left, still bear- 
ing the original name. The greater part of the distance had 
never been traveled, and we were obliged to pick our way as 
best we could. There was not even an Indian trail to guide us. 
We were twenty days in crossing the state of Minnesota to Fort 
Abercrombie, on the Red River of the North, at that time the 
last outpost of civilization. Remaining there a few days for 
repairs, we resumed our journey early in July over the trackless 
plains, certain of our point of destination, but uncertain as to 
the distance between us and it, the time to be consumed in get- 
ting there, and all the difficulties of the long and tedious travel. 
Conscious of our exposure to attacks from savages, we were on 
the lookout every moment. A trip that is now completed in 
five days and is continuously a pleasure-trip consumed five 
months of time, every moment filled with, care and anxiety."— 
(N. P. Langford.) 



AGAINST THE WATERS 193 

arms of himself and his fellow laborers^ these must 
furnish his transportation. The muscles tried and 
proved, the mind calm amid peril, the heart un- 
wearied by reverses or hardships — these were the 
items of the capital, universal and indispensable, of 
the West. We may trace here the development of 
a type as surely as we may by reading the storied 
rocks of geology. This time of boat and horse, of 
pack and cordelle and travois, of strenuous personal 
effort, of individual initiative, left its imprint for- 
ever and indelibly on the character of the Ameri- 
can, and made him what he is to-day among tlie 
nations of the globe. 

There was still a West when Kaskaskia was queen. 
Major Long's expedition up the Platte brought back 
the ^^important fact" that the "whole division of 
North America drained by the Missouri and the 
Platte, and their tributaries between the meridians 
of the mouth of the Platte and the Rockies, is almost 
entirely unfit for cultivation, and therefore unin- 
habitable for an agricultural people." There are 
many thousands of farmers to-day who can not quite 
agree with Major Long's dictum, but in that day 
the dictum was accepted carelessly or eagerly. No 
one west of the Mississippi yet cared for farms. 
There were swdfter ways to wealth than farming, 
and the wild men of the West of that day had only 



194 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

scorn and distrust for the whole theory of agricul- 
ture. 

'^As soon as you thrust the plow into the earth/' 
said one adventurer * who had left the East for 
the wilder lands of the West;, "it teems Anth worms 
and useless weeds. Agriculture increases popu- 
lation to an unnatural extent." For such men 
there was still a vast world without weeds, where 
the soil was virgin, where one might be uncrowded 
by the touch of home-building man. Let the farm- 
ers have Ohio and Kentucky; there was still a West. 

There was, in the first place, then, the West of 
the fur trade, the trade that had come down through 
so many vicissitudes, legacy of Louis the Grand 
Monarch and his covetous intriguers. For gen- 
erations the coureurs du hois, wild peddlers of the 
woods, had traced the ultimate waterways of the 
far Northwest, sometimes absent for one, two, or 
more years from the place they loosely called home, 
sometimes never returning at all from the savagery 
that offered so great a fascination, often too strong 
even for men reared in the lap of luxury and 
refinement. 

Steam was but an infant, after all, in spite of the 
little steamboat triumphs of the day. The waters 
offered roadway for the steamboats, and water 
transportation by steam was much less expensive 



AGAINST THE WATERS 195 

than transportation by railway ; but the head of navi- 
gation by steamboats was only the point of departure 
of a wilder and cruder transportation. Beyond the 
natural reach of the canot du Nord, the lesser craft 
of the natives, the smaller birch-barks, took up the 
trail, and passed even farther up into the unknown 
countries; and beyond the head of the ultimate 
thread of the waters the pack-horse, or the travois 
and the dog, took up the burden of the day, until the 
trails were lost in the forest, and the traveler carried 
his pack on his own back.* 

It is a curious fact, and one perhapsi not commonly 
known, that the Indian sign of the '^cutthroat" (the 
forefinger drawn across the throat), which is the uni- 
versal name for "Sioux" among all other American 
tribes, is, in all likelihood, a misnomer. The Sioux 
were dog Indians of old, before they got horses from 
the West, and they worked the dog as a draft animal, 
with a collar about the neck, just as it is now worked 
over much of the sub-arctic country. The sign of 
the two fingers across the neck once indicated "dog" 
as plainly as the single finger across the neck now 



*The pack of the "timber-cruiser," or "land-looker," of the 
lumber trade is made of stout canvas, with shoulder-straps. When 
the cruiser starts out on his lonely woods voyage, his pack, 
with its contents of tent, blankets, flour, and bacon, weighs about 
eighty pounds, exclusive of the rifle and ax which he also carries. 
Hfl may be absent for a month at a time, and he crosses country 
Impenetrable to any but the footman. 



196 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

signifies "cutthroat." Not only did the native and 
early white wanderers of the wilderness use the dog 
as a draft animal, bnt they packed him as they later 
packed the horse in the wagonless lands of the 
West. 

This fact is still quite within the memory or prac- 
tice of man. A dog could draw more on a travels, 
or pole-frame, than he could carry on his back. 
It was not unusual to see a great copper kettle lashed 
to the poles of a travels drawn by a dog, and in the 
kettle piled indiscriminately moccasins, babies, pup- 
pies, and other loose personal property. Hitched to 
the proper sledge, six dogs could draw a thousand 
pounds over the snow. Thus ran the earliest stage- 
coach in the West. 

The great canoe, the travels, and the sledge were 
inventions of the early French fur trade, but we 
used them as we needed them when the fur country 
became our own. France ceded her trading posts 
to England in 1763, and England transferred them 
to us in 1796. The great Northwest Company had 
by 1783 extended its posts all along our Northern 
border, not being too particular about crossing the 
line; but by 1812 we had made our authority felt, 
and by 1816 had passed a law excluding foreigners 
from our fur trade. The old Northwest Company 



AGAINST THE WATEES 197 

handed over to the younger American Fur Company 
all the posts found to be within our marches. We 
heard, for the time, of the Pacific Fur Company, the 
Rocky Mountain Fur Company, the Missouri Fur 
Company, of the "free trappers" and "free traders" 
of the West. 

It matters not what form or name that trade as- 
sumed. The important fact is that we now, by means 
of this wild commerce, began to hear of such lands 
as Oregon, of that region now known as Montana, 
of a thousand remote and unmapped localities, which 
might ultimately prove inhabitable. Summer or 
winter, over all these new lands the wild new travel 
of the West went on, and after fashions it determined 
for itself. Thus, in the country of the Missouri, the 
left fork of our great American waterway, there was 
no birch-bark for the making of the canot du Nord. 
Hence the keel-boat, the setting pole and the sweep, 
the sail and the tracking line. Yet the great craft, 
like the Northern birch-bark ship, must at last reach 
a land of waterways too small for its bulk. The Mon- 
tana adventurers had not birch-bark, but they had the 
buffalo. They made "bull boats" out of the sun- 
dried hides, and these rude craft served to carry 
many a million dollars' worth of furs over gaps that 
would have seemed full long to a walking man. 



198 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

The outlying posts* at the head of the far-oS 
streams received their supplies from the annual 
caravan of keel-boats, or the later great Mackinaw 
boats, square-sterned craft fifty feet long, of twelve- 
foot beam, of four-foot freeboard, and a carrying 
capacity of fourteen tons.f Each of these boats 



*There were in all scores of these rude trading posts, whose his- 
tory is in some cases obscure. Fort Union was one of the famous 
early stations, and was built in 1828, near the mouth of the 
Yellowstone, being known for the first year or so as Fort Floyd. 
Kipp's Fort, or Fort Piegan, was erected in 1831 at the mouth of 
Marias River. Campbell and Sublette's Fort, or Fort William, was 
built on the Missouri, at or near the site of the later Fort Buford, 
in 1833. Fort F. A. Chardon was built in 1842 or 1843 at the mouth 
of the Judith; it was removed to the north bank of the Missouri 
in 1844 or 1845, and was rechristened Fort Lewis, in honor of 
Meriwether Lewis. In 1846 this post was torn down and rebuilt 
on the south bank of the Missouri, somewhat farther down stream. 
In 1850 it was wholly rebuilt, this time of adobe and not of logs, 
and this was the beginning of the famous Old Fort Benton, so 
long associated with all early memories of the upper Missouri. 
Fort Van Buren was on the right bank of the Yellowstone, and 
was built probably in 1835, some say in 1832. Fort Cass was 
erected in 1832, on the Yellowstone, near the mouth of the Bighorn. 
Fort Alexander, also on the Yellowstone, was built about 1840, 
possibly in 1839. It was most flourishing in 1849, and was aban- 
doned in 1850. It was located opposite the mouth of the Rosebud. 
Fort Sarpy was on the right bank of the Yellowstone, twenty-five 
miles above the mouth of the Bighorn. It was the last of the 
important posts to be built (probably about 1850), and was aban- 
doned about 1859, (v. Chittenden, "American Fur Trade;" who, 
however, differs from others in certain dates; as v. Rocky Moun- 
tain Magazine.) 

f'The principal articles of trade were alcohol, blankets, blue 
and scarlet cloth, sheeting (domestics), ticking, tobacco, knives, 
fire-steels, arrow-points, files, brass wire (different sizes), beads, 
brass tacks, leather belts (from four to ten inches wide), silver 
ornaments for hair, shells, axes, hatchets. Alcohol was the 
principal article of trade, until after the passing of an act of Con- 
gress (June 30, 1843) prohibiting it under severe penalties. . . . 
There was a bitter rivalry between the Hudson Bay Company and 
the American Fur Company. The Hudson Bay Company often sent 



AGAINST THE WATERS 199 

required a crew of twelve men, and it took six months 
of the hardest labor towing, tracking, poling, and 
rowing to get the clumsy craft from St. Louis to 
such a spot as old Fort Benton. The run down- 
stream required only about thirty days, and it was 
commonly believed that the square stern of the 
Mackinaw caused it to run faster than the current 
in taking the rapids of the Missouri. 

The labor of this primitive transportation, this 
wading for hundreds of miles each spring against an 
icy torrent, was not work for children. It was not 
children that this wild trade begot, but men. The 
Titanic region demanded Titanic methods. It made 
its own laws and customs, struck out for itself new 
methods. The world beyond never asked the world 
behind what or how to do. This vast, rude land 
asked no other country how to perform the tasks 
that lay before it. Of the wildness and rudeness of 



men to induce fhe confederated Blackfeet to go north and trade, 
and the Indians said they were offered large rewards to kill all 
the traders on the Missouri River and destroy the trading-posts. 
. . . When the Blackfeet commenced to trade on the Missouri, 
they did not have any robes to trade; they saved only what they 
wanted for their own use. The Hudson Bay Company only wanted 
furs of different kinds. The first season the Americans did not 
get any robes, but traded for a large quantity of beaver, otter, 
marten, etc. They told the Indians they wanted robes, and from 
that time the Indians made them their principal article of trade. 
The company did not trade provisions of any kind to the Indians, 
but when an Indian made a good trade he would get a spoonful 
of sugar, which he would put in his medicine-bag to use in sick- 
ness when all other remedies failed." ("The Rocky Mountain 
Magazine.") 



200 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

this new world there could be no question, but its 
savagery was met by a savage determination more 
fearless and indomitable than its own. 

The mountain trapper, the prairie freighter and 
trader, the California miner were great men, tremen- 
dous men, fit successors of those that fought their way 
across the Alleghanies. The fur trade was practically 
over by 1834, and the Santa Fe trade lasted, roughly 
speaking, only about twenty years, being practically 
terminated in 1843 by the edict of Santa Anna. 
These difficulties in our Western commerce all came 
to an end with the Mexican War, and with the 
second and third great additions to our Western 
territory, which gave us the region on the south as 
well as the north, from ocean to ocean. 

This time was one of great activity in all the 
West, and the restless population that had gained 
a taste of the adventurous life of that region was 
soon to have yet greater opportunities. The dis- 
covery of gold in California unsettled not only all 
the West, but all America, and hastened immeasur- 
ably the development of the West, not merely as to 
the Pacific coast^ but also in regard to the mountain 
regions between the great plains and the coast. 

The turbulent population of the mines spread from 
California into every accessible portion of the Rock- 
ies. The trapper and hunter of the remotest range 



AGAINST THE WATERS 201 

found that he had a companion in the wilderness, 
the prospector, as hardy as himself, and animated 
by a feverish energy that rendered him even more 
determined and unconquerable than himself. Love 
of excitement and change invited the trapper to the 
mountains. It was love of gain that drove the 
prospector thither. Commercial man was to do in 
a short time what the adventurer would never have 
done. California, Oregon, Idaho, Montana — how 
swiftly, when we come to counting decades, these 
names followed upon those of Kentucky, Tennessee, 
and Ohio! 

In the new demands for locomotion and transpor- 
tation, which now arose from these new armies of 
moving men, the best thinkers of the country could 
for a long time suggest nothing better than the sea 
and the rivers as the great highways. Steamboats 
ran regularly on every Western river where such 
navigation was possible. Yet at the head of the 
waters there still existed, and in greater degree than 
ever before, long gaps between the abodes of the 
mountain population and their bases of supplies. 
The demand, moreover, was for transportation of 
heavy goods. 

The trapper that started out into the mountains 
might take only two or three extra horses. He did 
not use more than half a dozen traps in those 



20'? THE WAY TO THE WEST 

days, and counted always upon living upon wild 
game. The new population of the mining camp>, 
which spread all through the mountains with in- 
credible rapidity, was made up of an entirely different 
class of men, and was surrounded by an environment 
less bountiful. They did not come to hunt, but to 
dig or to riot; and they must be fed. At this time 
the necessity brought forth the man. It was the 
American packer that now saved the day. 

The pack-horse idea is as old as America, but in its 
perfection it is the product of the Spanish South- 
west. We read in history of the progresses of royal 
personages in ancient times in the Old World, where 
frequent mention is made of the number of sumpter- 
mules that attended the caravans in those roadless 
days. The sumpter-mule was the forerunner of the 
pack-mule, though it is to be doubted if any servant 
of an old-time king ever learned to do such impos- 
sible things with the sumpter-mule as the American 
packer did as a matter of course with his beasts of 
burden. 

Gradiial changes were taking place, about midway 
of the last century, in the characteristics of 
Western commerce. The trapper and the hunter 
had trafficked as individuals. The Santa Fe trade 
was in control of men who remained at home and 
sent their goods into another country, just as did 



AGAINST THE WATERS 203 

the early Phenician merchants. In the trade of the 
mining towns, the merchant had come to be a resi- 
dent and not a non-resident, and the transportation 
of his supplies was in the hands of companies or 
individuals who had not any ownership in the goods 
they handled. 

The greatest drama of the common carrier had 
its scene in the Rocky Mountains. The price of 
staples in any mountain town was something that 
not even the merchant himself could predict in 
advance, dependent as it was upon the thousand 
contingencies of freighting in rude regions and 
among hostile tribes. Prices that would stagger 
the consumer of to-day were frequently paid for the 
simplest necessaries. As in the days of the trappers' 
rendezvous everything was sold by the pint, so now 
the standard of measure became the pound. A com- 
mon price for sugar in a mining camp was thirty- 
five to fifty cents a pound. In the San Juan mining 
camps, as late as 1875, potatoes sold for twenty-five 
cents a pound. A mule or burro would earn its 
own cost in a single trip, for there were occasions 
under certain conditions, such as the packing from 
Florence into the more remote placer districts, when 
the pack-master charged as much as eighty cents a 
pound from the supply point to the camps. 

New cities began to be heard of in this mountain 



204 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

trade, just as there had been in the wagon days of the 
overland trail to Santa Fe: Pueblo, Canon City, 
Denver. All were outfitting and freighting points in 
turn, while from the other side of the range there 
were as many towns, — Florence, Walla Walla, Port- 
land, — which sent out the long trains of laden mules 
and horses. The pack-train was as common and as 
useful as the stage-line in developing the Black Hills 
region, and many another still less accessible. 

Commonly a horse or a mule would carry two 
hundred to three hundred pounds of freight, a burro 
one hundred to two hundred, and the price for 
packing averaged somewhere about five to ten cents 
a pound per hundred miles of distance, often very 
much more. It was astonishing what flexibility this 
old system of carriage had. A good pack-master 
would undertake to transport any article that might 
be demanded at the end of his route. It is well 
known that much heavy mining machinery was 
packed into the mountains; but this was not really 
very wonderful, for such machinery was made pur- 
posely in suitable sections for such transport. 

Somewhat more difficult were other articles, such as 
cook-stoves and the like, shipped not ^T^nocked down." 
A piano was one of the odd articles that went into 
the earliest of the Coeur d'Alene mining camps more 
than a score of years ago. It was packed on four 



AGAINST THE WATERS 205 

mules, the piano resting on a sling of poles, wliicli 
virtually bound the mules together as well as gave 
support to their burden, two mules going in front 
a.nd two behind. Wlien the animals became too 
tired to climb farther, the weight was temporarily 
lightened by resting the piano on forked sticks 
thrust up beneath the load. The strange package 
was taken through in safety, though at a cost of 
about a thousand dollars. All sorts of articles were 
shipped in the same fashion, and packages of glass- 
ware, cases of eggs, and many such goods cus- 
tomarily made the long and rough journeys in 
safety. 

The charges were made on the weight of the 
package, including the case or cover in which it 
was shipped, and it was poor policy on the part 
of the shipper to pack his goods too flimsily, 
for the grip of the ^^diamond hitch'^ was never 
a sparer of things beneath it. The hardest ar- 
ticle to pack in the mountains was quicksilver. 
This commodity was shipped in iron flasks, and the 
first thing the packer did was to unscrew the tops 
of these flasks and fill the remaining interior space 
completely with water, in order to prevent the heary 
blow of the shifting liquid contents, which was dis- 
tressing to the pack-horse. A flask of quicksilver 
weighed about ninety pounds, and it was customary 



20G THE WAY TO THE WEST 

to pack two flasks on each side of a horse or mule, 
each pair of flasks being fastened in a board frame, 
which gave facility for lashing all fast, and pre- 
vented the wear of the condensed weight against the 
back of the animal. 

Wood, hay, boxes, trunks, indeed almost anything 
that could be imagined, were common articles of 
transport in the mountains, and it was at times a bit 
odd to see a little burro almost hidden under a couple 
of Saratoga trunks so big that he could neither lie 
down nor roll over under them. The pack-train might 
comprise a score or a hundred horses, and the conduct 
of such a train was no small matter of skill and gen- 
eralship. 

Oxen were often used as pack-animals, the burden 
frequently being lashed to the horns. An ox could 
carry a fifty-pound sack of flour on top of its head, 
though special saddles were sometimes used for ox- 
packing. On the overland trail to California, cows 
were sometimes employed as pack-animals, and were 
often used in harness as draft-animals. Every one 
knows the story of the carts and hand-barrows of 
the great Mormon emigration. Under the old 
Western conditions of transportation, is it any won- 
der that horse-stealing was regarded as the worst 
crime of the calendar? 

The transportation of paddle and portage, of 



AGAINST THE WATERS 207 

sawbuck saddle and panniers^ however, could not 
forever serve except in the roughest of the mountain 
chains. The demand for wheeled vehicles was 
urgent, and the supply for that demand was forth- 
coming in so far as human ingenuity and resource- 
fulness could meet it. There arose masters in 
transportation, common carriers of world-wide fame. 
The pony express was a wonderful thing in its way, 
and some of the old-time stage-lines that first 
began to run out into the West were hardly less 
wonderful. For instance, there was an overland 
stage-line that ran from Atchison, on the Missouri 
Eiver, across the plains, and up into Montana by way 
of Denver and Salt Lake City. It made the trip 
from Atchison to Helena, nearly two thousand miles, 
in twenty- two days.* Down the old waterways 



♦In the "Montana Post" for February 11, 1865, there appeared 
the foUowing advertisement: 

OVERLAND 

STAGE LINE. 

Ben. Holladay, Proprietor. 

Carrying the Great Through Mail between 

the Atlantic and Pacific States. 

This line is now running in connection with the daily coaches 

between 

Atchison, Kansas & Placerville, Cal. 

Tri-weekly Coaches between Salt Lake City and Walla Walla, 

via Boise City, West Bannack, and 

Tri-weekly Coaches between 

Great Salt Lake City and Virginia City, Montana, 

via Bannack City. 

Carrying the U. S. Mail, 

Passengers, and Express Matter. 



208 THE. WAY TO THE WEST 

from the placers of Alder Gulch to the same town of 
Atchison was a distance of about three thousand 
miles. The stage-line began to shorten distances 
and lay out straight lines, so that now the West 
was visited by vast numbers of sight-seers, tourists, 
investigators, and the like, in addition to the actual 
population of the land, the men that called the West 
their home. 

We should find it difficult now to return to stage- 
coach travel, yet in its time it was thought luxurious. 
One of the United States bank examiners of that 
time, whose duties took him into the Western re- 
gions, in the course of fourteen years traveled over 
seventy-four thousand miles by stage-coach alone. 
It is the strange part of this vivid history of the 
AVest that many men who were prominent and active 
in its wildest and crudest da3^s are living to-day, fully 
adapted to the present conditions, and apparently 
almost forgetful that there ever was a different time. 
Thus one of the more prominent early wagon-train 



Also tri-weekly coaches between Virginia City and Bannack City. 
Coaches for Great Salt Lake City and Bannack City leave 
Virginia City every 

Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday Morning, 

connecting at Fort Hall; and coaches to Boise and Walla Walla, 

and at Great Salt Lake City, with the daily lines to the 

Atlantic States, Nevada, and California. 

Express matter carried in charge of competent and trustworthy 

messengers. 

For further particulars apply at oflBce. 
Nat Stein, Agent, 
Virginia City, Montana Territory. 



AGAINST THE WATERS 209 

freighters of Montana, now a prosperous banker of 
his state, gives a brief description of the old-time 
industry, which is interesting because at first hand. 
The freighter-banker goes on to say : 

"The wagons were large prairie schooners, usually 
three or four trailed together, pulled by sixteen to 
twenty head of the largest oxen you ever saw. It 
cost one cent a pound per one hundred miles to 
transport freight. Sometimes, of course, we w^ould 
get five times this. The danger was from Indians 
(Sioux and Blackfeet) attacking the trains and the 
drivers. The herders and wagon boss went armed. 
The earliest freighting point was from Fort Benton, 
Montana, to the mines in the Rockies.* When boats 
failed to reach Benton, owing to low water, then the 
teams went below, three to four hundred miles, to 
haul the freight up. In later times (after the junc- 
tion of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific rail- 



*A large advance over the capabilities of the old Mackinaw 
boats may be seen recorded in the log of a Missouri River 
steamboat: 

"Fort Benton, July 14, 1866. 

"First trip of steamer Deer Lodge, Captain Lawrence Ohlman, 
Clerk H. A. Dohrman, Engineer S. G. Hill. 

"Left St. Louis March 20, at QVz o'clock p. m., for Fort Benton, 
lost 12 days by ice, and arrived at Fort Union May 1, where we 
laid 4 hours and then started on our way up the river. Reached 
Fort Benton May 18, at iVs p. m. Discharged 200 tons of freight, 
and started on return to St'. Louis May 21, and arrived there June 
3, having made the trip down in 13 days and 15 hours. 

"Trip No. 2. Left St. Louis for Fort Benton Wednesday, June 
6, at 6% p. m., with 210 tons of freight, 60 tons for Randall, Rice. 



210 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

ways) we transported freight from Corinne, Utah. 
There were probably one million dollars invested by 
individuals and companies in Montana. The largest 
companies were the 'Diamond W Transportation 
Company, established by Colonel Charles A. Broad- 
water and three others, and I. G. Baker & Company. 
The latter company was owned and managed by the 
writer, and in the summer of 1879 transported over 
twenty million pounds of freight on wagons for the 
United States government, Canadian government, 
and the merchants of Montana." 

A study of the market reports of the old "Montana 
Post,'^ published 1864 to 1868, affords much insight 
into the life and conditions of that time. Comment- 
ing upon these facts, our early western resident, Mr. 
]^. P. Langford, remarks: 

"The high prices of mierchandise in Montana were 
the natural outcome of great cost of transportation, 
combined with large profits, owing to the great risks 

and Sully, 150 tons for Benton. Running time from St. Louis to 
Fort Sully 16 days; to Fort Rice 21 days; to Fort Union 27 days 
and 6 hours; to Milk River 291/2 days; to the mouth of Judith, or 
Camp Cook, 35 days 10 hours. Discharged 147 tons of freight and 
laid there 12 hours, and started again for Benton. Passed Drowned 
Man's Rapids in 21/0 minutes without laying a line or working a 
full head of steam. Laid up at Eagle Creek 3 hours, and arrived 
at Fort Benton July 13, at 4 p m. Time from St. Louis 36 days 
and 21 hours. 

"The round trip from Benton to St. Louis in 53 days and 12 
hours, without setting a spar or rubbing the bottom." (The 
"Montana Post.") 



AGAINST THE WATERS 211 

incurred in taking goods throiigii a hostile Indian 
country. As population increased, the necessity of 
procuring from the states a sure supply of the 
necessities of life was uppermost in the minds of 
the people. With the fortune of Midas, they feared 
soon to share his fate, and have nothing but gold to 
eat. But there was no lack of adventurous traders 
in the states, who were ready to incur the risks 
incident to a long overland journey, whose successful 
termination was certain greatly to enrich them.* 

"The supplies were brought into the mining camps 
of Montana by three different routes: the over- 
land route from Omaha or St. Joseph, Missouri, by 
way of Denver and Salt Lake, a distance of nineteen 
hundred miles; from St. Louis by way of the Mis- 
souri river to Fort Benton; aaid by pack-train from 
the Pacific slope, starting from Portland or Walla 
Walla, Oregon, crossing the Coeur d'Alenes and the 
main ranges of the Rockies, and coming over the 
Bitter Root valley. 

"The larger part of the merchandise brought to 
Montana came by the first-named route. The ve- 



*In the sixties the price of wheat was at times so low in Iowa 
that farmers could not pay their taxes. Many men engaged in 
freighting flour and bacon fr r Iowa to Denver, Colorado, via 
Council Bluffs and the route up the Platte valley, then a part of 
the buffalo range and a favorite hunting-ground of the Sioux and 
Pawnees. The father of the writer made such a trading-trip 
in 1860. 



212 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

hides used in transportation were, for the most part, 
what were known as ^Murphy wagons' — vehicles with 
large wheels and strong bodies, capable of holding 
eight thousand pounds of general merchandise, and 
drawn by five or six yoke of oxen, or by as many 
spans of mules. During the rainy season, and for 
many weeks after a storm, it was frequently the case 
that not more than five miles a day of progress could 
be made with such a wagon train over the alkali 
plains or along the valley of such a stream as Bitter 
Creek. An average journey was about one hundred 
miles a week, and thus an entire season, commenc- 
ing at the time when the grass of the plains was 
sufficiently grown to furnish food for oxen and 
mules, and lasting from eighteen to twenty weeks, 
was consumed in making the journey. 

"One who lias never seen the plains, rivers, rocks, 
caiions, and mountains of the portion of the country 
traversed by these caravans, can form but a faint 
idea from any description given of them of the in- 
numerable and formidable difficulties with which 
every mile of this weary march was encumbered. 
History has assigned a foremost place among its 
glorified deeds to the passage of the Alps by Napo- 
leon, and to j;he long and discouraging march of the 
Erench army under the same great conqueror to 
Russia. If it be not invidious to compare small 



AGAINST THE WATERS 31L5 

things with great,, we may assuredly claim for these 
early pioneers greater conquests over nature than 
were made by either of the great military expeditions 
of Napoleon. A successful completion of the journey 
was simply an escape from death." 

The nature of the transportation of passengers 
over the overland route ijiay be inferred from a trip 
once made by the above writer by stage from 
Atchison, on the Missouri River, to Helena, Montana, 
which is thus described : 

*^^The journey required thirty-one days of con- 
tinuous staging, and was prolonged by delays occa- 
sioned by the incursions of the hostile Sioux, who 
had killed several stock-tenders at different stations, 
burned the buildings, and stolen the horses. From 
their frequent attacks upon the coaches it was 
necessary for us to be on the constant outlook. On 
the second day after leaving Atchison, the eastern- 
bound coach met us, having on board one wounded 
passenger, the next day with one dead, and the next 
with another wounded. At Sand Hill station the 
body of the station keeper was lying by the side of 
the smoking ruins of the log cabin. As there was 
no stock to be found for a change of horses, we 
drove on with our worn-out team, at a slow pace, to 
the next station. The reports of passengers eastern- 
bound were also very discouraging. Yet this risk of 



2U THE WAY TO THE WEST 

life did not lessen travel. The coaches were gener- 
all}^ full. The fare from Atchison to Helena was 
four hundred and fifty dollars, and our meals cost 
each of us upward of one hundred and fifty dollars 
more." 

These preliminary statements as to the difficulties 
and dangers of the early transportation will make 
plainer the somewhat extraordinary prices of mer- 
chandise that often ruled. Thus, on December thirty- 
first, 1864, one will see coal oil quoted in the market 
reports of Virginia City, Montana, at nine to ten 
dollars per gallon. On January twenty-eighth, 1865, 
we read: "Candles: less active in consequence of the 
decline in coal oil." Then comes, ^'^Coal oil, nine 
dollars; linseed oil, ten dollars." At the head we read 
that these market quotations are wholesale prices for 
gold, and that ten per cent, should be added for 
retail prices. At the bottom we have greenback 
quotations for gold dust and gold coin, showing that 
greenbacks were worth not quite forty-five cents on 
the dollar for gold coin. Even this was more than 
they were worth in the States, with gold at two twen- 
ty-five. Coal oil at nine dollars a gallon in gold, with 
greenbacks at forty-five cents, would cost twenty 
dollars a gallon in greenbacks, at wholesale. Add 
ten per cent., and we have twenty-two dollars as the 
retail price. Linseed oil at ten dollars a gallon 



AGx\IXST THE WATERS 215 

in gold would be twenty-four dollars and twenty 
cents a gallon in greenbacks, at retail. 

In the issue of the Post of April twenty-second, 
1865, flour was quoted at eighty-five dollars a sack of 
one hundred pounds on April seventeenth, and it is 
stated that on April nineteenth, within a few hundred 
miles, it had sold for five dollars a pound. This was 
just after the surrender of Lee's army, when green- 
backs were selling for ninety cents for gold dust, and 
at eighty-two (eight per cent, less) for coin. This 
was over six dollars a pound for flour, or twelve hun- 
dred dollars for a barrel ! 

On April twenty-ninth, 1865, potatoes were worth 
forty to fifty cents a pound in gold. At an average 
price of forty-five cents a pound, a bushel (seventy 
pounds) cost thirty-eight dollars in greenbacks. On 
May sixth we read : ^'Potatoes. Several large loads 
have arrived, . . . causing a decline of five cents 
a pound." So potatoes dropped off in price, in one 
day, four dollars in greenbacks per bushel. 

'^On May thirteenth," comments Mr. Langford 
further, regarding this interesting commercial situa- 
tion, "we note that the principal restaurant, ^in con- 
sequence of the recent fall in flour,' reduced day board 
to twenty dollars per week for gold. The food of this 
restaurant was very plain, and dried-apple pies were 
considered a luxurv. At that time I was collector 



216 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

of internal revenue, and received my salary in green- 
backs. I paid thirty-six dollars per week for day 
board at the Gibson House, at Helena. During the 
period of the greatest scarcity of flour, the more 
common boarding houses posted the following signs: 
^Board with bread at meals, $32; board without 
bread, $22; board with bread dt dinner, $25.' Those 
who took bread at each meal paid about ten dollars 
per week more than those who took none." 

Here is the story of an incipient bread riot in the 
ancient W^est of thirty-five years ago, taken from 
the columns of the journal previously mentioned : 

'^Virginia City, Montana, April 23, 1865. 

"April 16. The flour market opened at an ad- 
vance of ten dollars per sack, and by eleven o'clock 
A. M. had reached the nominal price of sixty-five 
dollars per ninety-eight-pound sack. The day clos- 
ing, holders asked a further advance of five dollars 
per sack. 

^^April IT. The demand for flour is increasing. 
The market opened firm at yesterday's prices. Be- 
fore ten o'clock it had advanced to seventy-five 
dollars per sack. Eleven o'clock rolls round and 
finds dealers in this staple asking eighty dollars per 
ninety-eight-pound sack. A few transactions were 
made at these figures. Before twelve o'clock trans- 



AGAINST THE WATERS 217 

fers were made at eighty-five dollars per sack, and 
some few dealers were asking a further advance of 
five dollars per sack. Consumers, having no other 
resource, were compelled to concede to the nominal 
price of holders, and paid ninety dollars per sack in 
gold. 

"April 18. Flour is truly on the rampage, no 
concession from dealers' prices on the part of the 
very few holders of considerable quantities, with a 
still further advance of five dollars per sack, which 
brings the price of an average lot of flour to the 
unprecedented figures, in this market, of one dollar 
per pound. 

"April 19. The flour market weakened under the 
exciterti^nt of ^current reports' from some new specu- 
lators in the market, transfers of small lots being 
made at eighty dollars per sack. 

"Eleven o'clock. Our city is thrown into a state 
of excitement. Rumors of a bread riot are heard 
from all quarters. 

"Twelve o'clock. Our principal streets are well 
lined and coated with men, avowedly on the raid 
for flour. 

"Later. Flour is seized wherever found, in large 
or small quantities, and taken to a common depot. 
On the pretext under which several lots of flour 
were confiscated, we do not think that any one would 



218 THE AVAY TO THE WEST 

consider it wrong or objectionable to store flour, 
"imder the present circumstances, in fire-proof cellars 
or warehouses. 

"We, however, do not indorse the concealing of 
flour under floors or haystacks when the article is 
up to the present price. We know of no parties 
that were holders of flour that could not have real- 
ized a handsome profit at seventy-five dollars per 
sack; but in favor of merchants that have invested 
in this staple at high figures, we should state that 
we have known flour to be sold within a circum- 
ference of a few hundred miles at the rate of five 
dollars per pound, and no raiders in the market." 

"Virginia City, M. T., May 6, 1865. 

"The business of the w^eek is a slight improvement 
over many weeks past, owing to the fine weather 
sending miners all to work. 

''Flour. Still continues very scarce, three small 
lots, only one hundred and twenty-one sacks in all, 
having arrived from over the range, and were rapidly 
sold at seventy-five dollars per sack. The want of 
this staple is very much felt, as all substitutes for 
this article are about exhausted." 

These curious and rapidly forgotten records of 
another day show us clearly that, even as late as the 
Civil War, there was a vast land beyond the Missouri 



AGAINST THE WATERS 219 

whose people and whose customs were different from 
those of the East; which had earned its own right 
to be different; which was as strong and self-reliant 
and resourceful as though it were part of another 
sphere; and which might claim that it had solved 
its own problems for itself and asked no aid. * Yet 
it was this yerj aloofness and independence that 
had always threatened, in one way or another, the 
secession of the West in fact or in sympathy from 
the East. Therefore we count that a great day — a 
day fatal for the West, but glorious for America. — 
when the heads of the streams were reached and 
the mountains overrun. It was a great day, an 
important date — though unrecorded in any history 
of this land — when the West had gone as far away 
as it could, and at last had turned and begun to 
come back home! 

At the end of the Civil War the West had ex- 
hausted all the possibilities of down-stream and 
up-stream transportation. It had developed its re- 
sources to a remarkable degree. But now the 
time was come for newer, more rapid, and more 
revolutionary methods. The West was at the begin- 
ning of another and not less interesting era, a time 
of swift and startling change. 

If our theory regarding Western transportation 
and Western emigration has been correct, we should 



220 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

now be able to cheek back on the census map, 
and expect to find a certain verification of our con- 
clusions. It is curious to observe that the path of 
the star, which marks on the census charts the 
center of population, in reality has followed much 
the same line as the early west-bound movement 
with which we have been principally concerned. 
The star moves slowly westward, across the Alle- 
ghanies, as did the first pioneers. Then it follows 
down the valley of the Ohio, as did the early 
down-stream population under our theory of the 
transportation of that day. 

In 1860 the center of population is situated on the 
Ohio Eiver, perhaps a hundred miles east of the city 
of Cincinnati. In 1860 the colors thicken deeply 
along the river valleys ; and far up the streams, even 
toward the heads of the Mississippi and the Missouri, 
the map tells us that the population is denser than it 
is in regions remote from any waterways. In 1870 the 
face of the map remains, for the most part, bare west 
of the Missouri, except where the Indian reservations 
lie. 

On the Pacific coast, in California and Oregon, 
there is a population in some districts of forty-five 
to ninety persons to the square mile. Around Hel- 
ena, Deer Lodge, and other mining towns of Montana, 
there is a faint dash of color showing a population 



AGAINST THE WATERS 221 

of two to six souls to the square mile^ which is 
be3'oncl the average of all but a few localities west 
of the Missouri River. At Salt Lake, at Denver, at 
Santa Fe, termini of transportation in their day, as 
we have seen, there are bands of a similar color. 
The total population of America, which in 1810 
was 7,239^881, and in 1820, the beginning of our 
up-stream days, was 9,633,822, is in 1860 31,443,321 
and in 1870 38,558,371.* Nearly all of this popu- 
lation shows on the census map as east of the 
Missouri River. Out in the unsettled and unknown 
region west of the Missouri there still lay the land 
that to the present generation means the West, 
appealing, fascinating, mysterious, inscrutable; and 
for that W^est there was to come another day. 



♦The average density of settlement of the United States was, in 
1810, 17.7 persons to the square mile; in 1820, 18.9 persons; in 
1860, 26.3; in 1870, 30.3. 



THE WAY TO THE PACIFIC 

CHAPTER I 

KIT CAESON 

In reviewing the life of Christopher Carson, an- 
other of our Western leaders in exploration, we come ,A 
upon the transition period between the time of 
up-stream transportation and that which led across 
the waters; the epoch wherein fell the closing days 
of Western adventure properly so called, and the 
opening days of a Western civilization fitly so named. 
Kit Carson, as he was always called, was born in 
Madison County, Kentucky, on December twenty- 
fourth, 1809. Thus it may be seen that his time 
lapped over that of Crockett and even of Boone. It 
is not generally known, yet it is the case, that Kit 
Carson was a grandson of Daniel Boone. 

Carson's life, therefore, rounds out the time of the 
great Westerners. He comes down to the railroad- 
building day. His was the time of the long-haired 
men of the American West. John Colter, Jim 

Bridger, Bill Williams, the mulatto Beckwith or 

223 



224 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

Beckworth ; the great generals of the fur trade, Lisa, 
Ashley, Henry, Smith, Sublette, Fitzpatrick, all that 
company of the great captains of hazard — these were 
the men of his day ; and among them all, not one has 
come down to us in more distinct figure or with 
memory carrying greater respect. 

We call Fremont ''The Great Pathfinder," and 
credit him with the exploration of the Eockies, the 
Pacific slope, and the great tramontane interior 
basins. Yet Fremont did not begin his explorations 
until 1842, and by that time the West of the ad- 
venturers was practically an outlived thing. For 
ten years the fur trade had been virtually defunct. 
For more than a decade the early commerce of the 
prairies had been waning. The West had been 
tramped across from one end to the other by a race 
of men peerless in their daring, chief among whom 
might be named this little, gentle, blue-eyed man, 
of whom that genially supercilious and generall}^ 
ignorant biographer, J. S. C. Abbott, is good enough 
to write: "It is strange that the wilderness could 
have formed so estimable a character !" - 

This little man — ^he is described by one who knew 
him as a small man, not over five feet six inches in 
height — ^had, long before he ever heard of Fremont, 
ridden and walked along every important stream of 
the Eocky Mountains; had journeyed across the 



KIT CARSON" 225 

"American Desert" a dozen times, back and forth; 
had seen every foot of the Rockies from the Forks of 
the Missouri to the Bayou Salade; had seen all of 
New Mexico; had visited old Mexico, Arizona, 
Nevada, and California as we now know them; had 
camped at every resting ground along the Arkansas 
and Platte; had fought and traded with every Indian 
tribe from the Apaches up through the Navajos, 
Cheyennes, Comanches, Sioux, and Crows; had even 
fought the Blackfeet, redoubtable Northern war- 
riors. 

In short. Kit Carson and his kind had really ex- 
plored the West, and by 1843 had rendered it 
safe for the so-called "exploration" that was to 
make its wonders public. It is Kit Carson who 
might better have the title of "pathfinder." Yet 
this was something to which he himself would not 
have listened, for well enough he knew that he was 
not the first. Ahead of him were other apostles of 
the fur trade, so that even Kit Carson took the 
West at second hand, 'as later we shall see. He 
would not have vaunted himself as knowing very 
much of the West. Yet even to-day men of the East 
are exploring the West, and writing gravely of their 
"discoveries." 

Five feet six, with twinlvling blue-gray eyes, a 
large and well-develo})ed head, with hair sandy and 



226 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

well brushed back, Kit Carson at his best was the 
reverse of impressive. He was simple, peaceable 
and quiet in disposition, temperate and strictly moral 
in a time and place where these qualities made one 
a marked man. Yet throughout the length and 
breadth of the Indian country this little man was 
more feared, single and alone, than any other trapper 
or Indian fighter in all the West. He was respected as 
well as feared. One who knew him well said : "Carson 
and truth mean the same thing. He is always the 
same, gallant and disinterested. He is kind-hearted 
and averse to all quarrelsome and turbulent scenes. 
He is known far and wide for his sober habits, strict 
honor, and great regard for truth." 

One of Carson's historians describes him as five 
feet nine inches in height, as weighing one hundred 
and sixty pounds, and as having a "dark and piercing 
eye." This "dark and piercing eye" is something 
that, as we have noted, the average writer on 
Western themes and Western adventures will not 
willingly let die. As a matter of fact, however, we 
are to believe that our hero was a much smaller man 
than this description makes him out to be, and that, 
though of well-developed and compact frame, he was 
by no means of imposing presence. 

We shall do better with his raiment, for here we 
take hold upon the characteristics of the West at its 



V:V 




^.-^^;^^-^'^- 



:p^\o^^- -.^^n 



ck^^" 



A VOYAGEUR 



KIT CARSON" 227 

iTiost romantic time. In the garb habitual with him 
for more than half his life, Carson was clad in a 
fringed buckskin shirt, with leggings of the same ma- 
terial, also befringed. The shirt was handsomely em- 
broidered with quills of the porcupine, and as much 
might be said for the moccasins that protected his 
feet. His cap was of fur, sometimes of fox skin, 
sometimes of 'coon skin, mayhap in days of great pros- 
perity, of otter. 

His rifle was that of Boone or Crockett, improved 
only to a limited extent, though carrying a ball some- 
what larger than that needed in the forests of Ken- 
tucky. Otherwise he might have been the typical 
early American rifleman of the Alleghanies. Under 
his right arm rested his powder horn and bullet 
pouch. A heavy knife for butchering hung at his 
belt, as well as a whetstone to keep it in good condi- 
tion. At a certain time in his career Carson wore an 
ornamented belt, with heavy silver buckle, which sup- 
ported two revolvers and a knife. 

He took on in modest sort the picturesque fashions 
of the wilderness, and, uniting as he did the mount- 
ains and the plains in his habitat, at times showed 
something of the Spanish love of display in the trap- 
pings of his horse. His saddle and bridle had trace 
of Mexico in their gold and silver ornamentation. 
His horse, be sure, was a good one; for those were 



228 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

times when a man's safety much depended on the 
fleetness and soundness of his mount, and the horse 
was the means of transportation for Carson and his 
kind. 

As to the career of this Western man, if we come 
to follow it out as it occurred in sequence, we shall 
arrive at but one conclusion, to wit: that, conditions 
considered, Kit Carson was the greatest of all Ameri- 
can travelers. It is almost unbelievable, the dis- 
tances he traversed along with his wild fellows during 
those vivid years in which he forced the wild West to 
yield him a living. We can not do better than to 
trace some of his wanderings, more especially those 
that occurred before the day of the so-called explora- 
tion of the West. 

Fremont, who knew Carson well, speaks of him 
as a native of Boone's Lick County, Missouri; but 
Doctor Peters, his biographer, states, apparently with 
Carson's authority, that Carson was born in Madison 
County, Kentucky, as above stated, and while but 
one year of age was brought to Howard County, 
Missouri, by his parents. The father of Carson was 
a good farmer, according to the lights of his time, 
and a good hunter, the life of Missouri during those 
early times being practically that known by the 
blockhouse farmers of Kentucky in the time of 
Boone. Kit grew up sturdy, quiet, self-contained, 



KIT CARSON 229 

self-reliant. In his boyhood he was a steady rifle 
shot, and early acquired a reputation. He "hunted 
with the Sioux Indians/' we are told, when yet a 
boy; which means he must have gone north up the 
Missouri. 

At fifteen years of age he was called "old for his 
age;" he was known to be plucky, prompt, and 
tenacious of his rights, though not in the least 
quarrelsome. Just as well-meaning parents tried to 
send Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone to school, so 
did the kind parents in this ease undertake to instil 
commercial principles into the mind of Kit Carson. 
To his father it seemed important that he should be 
apprenticed to a saddler. From the saddler's stool 
Kit promptly fell off. It was the out-of-doors that 
appealed to him; the West that spoke to him, just 
as it had to Boone and Crockett. He broke his heart 
for two years at the saddler's bench, and that ended 
both his commercial and scholastic education. In 
1826, while still but a boy, he was off and away 
across the plains, having, without his parents' eon- 
sent, joined a party bound for Santa Fe. Thus 
would the youth seek his fortune. 

Carson reached Santa Fe in the month of No- 
vember, 1826, and went thence to Fernandez de 
Taos, eighty miles northeast of Santa Fe, and spent 
the winter with an old mountaineer named Kincaid, 



230 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

or Kin Cade, who taught him something of the lore of 
the mountains. Perhaps a little homesick, in the 
spring of 1827 he started back for the East, without a 
penny in his buckskin pockets. He worked back 
homeward on the long journe}^ down the Arkansas to 
a point about four hundred and fifty miles east of 
Santa Fe, and there, at the ford of the Arkansas, met 
another band of traders, west-bound, to whom he 
hired out as a teamster. 

He again reached Santa F'e, still without a dollar, 
and went as teamster thence as far south as El Paso, 
returned to Santa Fe, and again to Taos. He was 
learning Spanish and learning New Mexico all this 
time. He now hired out as cook to Ewing Young, 
and continued in this interesting capacity until the 
spring of 1828. Again he started East, again failed 
to win farther than before, and joined another west- 
bound party, to reach Santa Fe a third time. Now 
he could do a bit in Spanish, and hence engaged as 
interpreter for Colonel Tramell, and wagoned it as 
far south as Chihuahua, in old Mexico. All this 
sounds full easy, yet even these few Journeyings 
hitherto covered many, many weary, blistering miles. 

In far-olf Chihuahua young Carson hired out as a 
teamster, serving in the employ of Robert McKnight. 
He went to the Copper Mines, on the Gila Eiver, and 
thence back once more to Taos, which latter place 



KIT CAKSON 331 

was to serve as his headquarters all His life. AH 
this time it was Carson's ambition to be something 
better than a cook, or a teamster, or even an inter- 
preter. The adventurer's blood was in his veins. It 
was April of 1829 when he joined Young's party of 
trappers, and soon thereafter he saw his first nght, 
in which the white men killed some fifteen Indians. 
It is not known whether or not Carson distinguished 
himself in this fight, but certainly he remained with 
the party, and it was no coward's company. 

This band now worked toward the West, trapped 
down the Salt River, and reached the head of the San 
Francisco River. They concluded to go over to the 
Sacramento River of California, then reported to 
abound in fur. On the seventh day's journey to 
the west and southwest, they reached the Grand 
Canon of the Colorado, now admitted to be one of 
the wonders of the world. These trappers always 
remembered the Grand Canon of the Colorado; for 
it wasi near there that they bought a horse of some 
wandering Indians, and ate it. They were very 
hungry. 

There were no trails across the interior desert in 
those days. Hence, although these were not the first 
adventurers to cross to California., they were in effect 
pioneers. In some way they succeeded in reaching 
San Gabriel Mission of California, and thence — ^by 



232 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

some very wonderful geography on the part of one 
or two biographers — they reached the Sacramento 
Elver. In the San Joaquin valley they met Peter 
Ogden's party of Hudson Bay trappers. So we may 
see that the West was far from being an unexploited 
country when Kit Carson began his travels. 

This early transcontinental party was successful in 
its trapping, and the leader, Ewing Young, visited 
San Rafael with the catch of furs and sold it out in 
entirety to the captain of a trading schooner. He 
then bought horses for the return East. The Indians 
of the Sierra foothills promptly stole certain num- 
bers of these horses. Witness augury of the future 
of Kit Carson, when we read that he was detailed 
as the leader of a little party sent out in pursuit of 
the horse thieves. This was his first independent 
scouting trip. He and his party killed eight Indians 
and retook the horses. Already his hand was ac- 
quiring cunning in the stern trade of Western life. 

September of 1829 found Kit Carson back again 
in XeAV Mexico. It took the party nine days to ride 
from Los Angeles to the Colorado River. Thence 
they seem to have descended the Colorado to tide- 
water, to have crossed over to the Gila, and to have 
ascended the Gila to San Pedro. There was some 
more horse stealing, a little exchange on both sides 
between the whites and Indians in this line. The 



KIT CARSON 233 

whites needed horses, for the}^ had no other meat. 
Yet in some fashion they won up the Gila Eiver to 
the copper mines of Xew Mexico; which, we may 
see, was ground already known to Carson. Here 
they cached their furs, since these would be con- 
traband under the Spanish law, nearly all of 
these wanderings having taken place in the Span- 
ish territory that was the western goal of the early 
commerce of the prairies. 

In time the party turned up at Santa Fe, reach- 
ing that city in April, 1830, where the leader. Young, 
disposed of his furs, the net result for eighteen men 
during a term of one year being twenty-four thou- 
sand dollars. Kit Carson was now twenty-one years 
of age, and he was fully initiated in his calling. 
We can not appreciate these journeyings except by 
taking an accurate map of the great Western country, 
and following, finger by finger, along stream and 
across mountain, the course of the early voyagers. 

This, however, is but the beginning. In the fall 
of 1830 the noted Western fur trader, Fitzpatrick, 
organized a strong party, and it was matter of course 
that Carson would find his way into it. This band 
visited the Platte Eiver, whose long southern arm 
reaches so deep down into the heart of the Rockies. 
Thence, along good beaver waters, they moved over 
to the Green River, Pacific waters, also historic in the 



2:^)4 THK WAY TO THE WEST 

fur trade. V^^e find them later in Jackson's Hole, 
east of the range, even today the center of a great 
game country. Thence they moved west to the 
Salmon Eiver, into a country still one of the wild- 
est parts of America ; and there, much as a matter of 
fact, they joined others of their party, who had 
started out slightly in advance of them, and "for 
whom they had been looking," as one chronicler 
naively advises us. It was a search and a meeting in 
the heart of a wilderness many hundreds of miles in 
extent. 

The winter of 1830-1831 was spent by Carson on 
the Salmon River. Xow enter those stern warriors 
of the Xorth, the Blackfeet. Kit saw four of his 
companions killed. He was inured to such scenes, 
and the incident gave him no pause. April of 
1831 found him on the Bear River. Moving, 
always moving, we see him now on the Green 
River, again in the ^'Xew Park" of Colorado, on the 
plains of Laramie, again on the long South Fork of 
the Platte, and presently on the Arkansas. Be- 
seech you, let your finger ever follow on the map; 
and accept warrant that if your following has been 
honest, your eyes shall stare in wonder at these 
journeyings. Let one seek to duplicate it himself, 
even in these civilized days when towns and ranches 
crowd the "West; and then, having restored that 



KIT CAESON 235 

West to the day of beaver and Blackfeet, ask himself 
how had it been with him had he been in Carson's 
company! 

This winter camp on the Arkansas Kiver furnished 
a certain amount of interest. A party of fifty Crow 
Indians raided the camp and stole a number of 
horses. It was Carson once nlore, we may be sure, 
who was elected to lead the pursuit. Twelve Indians 
were killed by the young leader and his hardy rifle- 
men. Carson was now accepted as one of the cap- 
tains of the trails. He had fully learned his bold 
and difficult trade. 

In the spring of 1832 Carson's party moved to the 
Laramie River; moved again to the headwaters of 
the South Fork of the Platte, and caught beaver 
and fought Indians for a few months; from the 
Laramie to the Bayou Salade, or Ballo Salade, as it 
was sometimes spelled in those days. These opera- 
tions were carried on in the heart of the most 
dangerous Indian country of the West. Heretofore 
it had been the custom of the trappers to go in 
parties of considerable size, so that they might suc- 
cessfully meet the Indians, who even thus made 
affairs dangerous enough. The quality of Carson's 
spirit may therefore be seen when we discover him, 
with only two companions, breaking away for a 
solitary beaver hunt in the mountains in the heart 



236 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

of the range. Yet these three were fortunate, and 
returned to Taos in the fall of 1832 well laden with 
furs. 

At Taos, Carson met Captain Lee of the United 
States Army, a partner of that Bent who founded 
Bent's Fort on the Arkansas. Captain Lee had a 
cargo of goods that he wished to take to the rendez- 
vous of the trapping bands for that year. Kit joined 
him foT the time, and in October of 1832 they pushed 
on, traveling part of the time on the old Spanish 
trail to California. They reached the White River, 
the Green River, the "Windy" River, and here, as 
though by special plan, they met their band of 
trappers, erected their skin lodges, and passed the 
winter. Kit joined the Eitzpatrick party for a time 
in the next spring, but after his own restless fashion 
broke away again, with only three companions. 

In the summer of 1833 we find the four on the 
Laramie River, doing independent trapping and tak- 
ing their chances as to Indians. It was about this 
time that Kit had his historic adventure with two 
bears, which chased him up a tree, and which he 
repelled by beating them over the noses with a branch 
broken from the tree. The ever-wise biographer Ab- 
bott, who gravely informs us that Crockett killed 
"voracious grizzly bears" in the cane-brakes of Ten- 
nessee, with equal accuracy advises us that the "grizzly 



KIT CARSON 237 

bear can climb a tree as well as a man." Herein we 
find some mystery about Carson's bear adventure. 
Carson as a hunter would have been the first to know 
that a grizzly bear can not climb a tree unless it be a 
horizontal one. There is no doubt, however, that 
some such adventure took place with some sort of 
bears, and that Carson saved his leggings if not his 
life by a knowledge of the tenderness of a beards nose. 

All this time our Westerner, our trapper, is fitting 
himself for his work in the West as guide for 
"explorers." We find him with fifty men, pushing 
up quite to the headwaters of the Missouri River, 
and later he and some com-panions turn up along 
the historic Yellowstone River, a country then well 
known in the organized fur trade of St. Louis. We 
do not discover that he ever went into the regular 
employ of any of the fur traders. No engage or 
ordinary "pork eater'' he, but a companion nearly 
always of these independent fur traders, the individ- 
ual gentry of the wilderness. We find him now 
becoming acquainted with the Big Horn. He knows 
also the three forks of the Missouri; and he visits 
the "Big Snake" River and the Humboldt River, then 
called Mary's River, since scientists still were scarce 
in the Rockies. 

He wanders continually back and forth across the 
upper Rockies. Brown's Hole, Jackson's Hole, Henry 



238 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

Lake, the Black Hills, all the upper waters of the 
great rivers, the Columbia, the Snake, the Green, the 
Colorado, the Platte, the Missouri, the Yellowstone, 
the Arkansas, — ^you shall hardl}^ name any well-known 
Western region, any remote mountain park, any ac- 
curately mapped Western stream which you shall not, 
providing you have faithfully followed the wanderings 
of Kit Carson, discover to have been familiar to this 
man even before geographies were dreamed of west 
of the Missouri River. 

It would be but wearying to go on with the monot- 
onous chronicle of repeated Journeys back and forth, 
of hardships, of toils and dangers, of the round of the 
trapper's employment, of the wild life at those 
wild, strange annual markets of the mountains, the 
trappers' rendezvous. It will suffice us and serve us 
to remember that Carson practically closed his life 
as a trapper in 1834,* this date marking the end of 
eight years steadily employed by him in trapping 
and trading and in learning the West. In 1834 he 
and such companions as Bill Williams, William New, 
Mitchell, Frederick, and scores of others of his old- 
time friends, found themselves practically without 
a calling. When, after one long expedition west 

♦Pray remember always this date of 1834. It is writ in few 
histories. It marks the closing scenes of the fur trade, the waning 
of the wild West, the beginning of the new day. In 1834 the pre- 
liminary survey of civilization had been practically completed. 



KIT CARSON 239 

of the range, they reached Fort Koubidoux, it was 
only to discover that furs had gone very low in price. 

The advent of the silk hat had caused terror in St. 
Louis, and gloom throughout the Rockies. The day 
of the beaver trade was at an end. That animal, of 
so monstrous an importance in the history of the 
American continent, was now to assume a place far 
lower in estimation. Our bold, befringed mountain- 
eers learned that it would no longer pay to pursue it 
into the remote fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains. 
Yet the beaver had served its purpose. Following 
its tooth-marks on the trees, there had pressed on to 
the head of every Western river a man qualifying 
for office as guide of the west-bound civilization 
beyond the Missouri. Kit Carson, type of the grad- 
uated trapper and adventurer, had had his schooling. 

Yet a man must live, and if there be no price 
for beaver peltry he must turn his hand to something 
else for occupation. For eight years Kit Carson 
served as hunter for the post, well-known as Bent's 
Fort, on the Arkansas River. There he fed forty 
men on the wild meat of the plains, and during 
his eight years of hunting killed thousands of buf- 
falo, elk, and deer. He saw the plains in all their 
ancient undimmed splendor, and whether he most 
loved the mountains or the plains he himself never 
could tell. Carson at an earlier time had married 



240 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

an Indian girl, and during his engagement at Fort 
Bent he sent his one child, a daughter, to St. Louis 
for the purpose of acquiring an education. There 
the daughter married, went to California, and ap- 
parently passes from the scene. Carson's later 
marriage was with a Mexican woman very much 
younger than himself.* 

If in the year 1834 Carson terminated the first 
term of his Wanderschaft, in 1842, when he closed 
his first engagement as hunter for Bent's Fort, he 
completed the second season of his Western life and 
was ready for the third. In that year he joined a 
wagon train bound eastward, having determined to 
revisit his old home in Missouri, which he had not 
seen for sixteen years. The visit was sad and cheer- 
less enough. He returned to find his parents dead 
and forgotten, the old homestead in ruins, and not 
a friend left to take him by the hand. 

He hastened thence to St. Louis, but ten days of 
even the capital of the fur trade proved sufficient for 
him. Soon afterward, as is stated by his most re- 
liable biographer, he by mere chance met young Fre- 
mont, then bound West to '^explore" the Eocky 
Mountains, more especially that part of the Rockies 
in the vicinity of the South Pass. Fremont's guide 



*One of Carson's daughters, after a sad life story, is said to 
have died in New Mexico, in an insane asylum, in 1902. 



KIT CARSON 241 

did not materialize at the time, and Carson's modestly 
proffered services were engaged by the army officer, 
who needed a guide across country, which to many a 
Western man was as familiar as his own dooryard.* 

During his first expedition Carson does not seem 
to have been much valued by Fremont. Basil 
Lajeunesse was the favorite, and it was always Basil 
Lajeunesse here, there, and everywhere; Carson, a 
man of much greater experience and reliability, 
having not as yet come into his own as a guide, 
though forsooth there was small need of guiding on 
this journey. Fremont engaged Carson at one hun- 
dred dollars a month, and he was the twenty-eighth 
man in the party, which also included two boys, young 
relatives, who after all were not in so very dangerous 
an enterprise. 

Little of the eventful occurred in the long journey 
across Kansas to Fort Laramie, and so at last they 
arrived at the South Pass, having met no Indians at 
all, although they had feared the Sioux. Fremont 
rode across the gentle summit so long known to the 
fur traders, climbed the mountain that was later 
named for him, and returned to Fort Laramie in 
September, 1842. Thus ended his first expedftion, 
which began his reputation as a ^^pathfinder." Let 



*V. Chapter III, Vol. Ill; Early Explorers of the Trans- 
Missouri. The Oregon trail was then a plain highway. 



242 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

him who has followed the travels of Kit Carson in 
the trapping trade state who was the real finder of 
the paths. 

After the first Fremont expedition, Carson re- 
turned to Bent's Fort, and in Fehruary of 1843 
married the young Mexican woman who remained 
his faithful companion throughout his life. Carson 
was sent with a message to Governor Armijo with a 
warning for the latter, but one hundred of the Mexi- 
cans connected with Armijo's wagon train were killed 
by the Texans on the historic wagon road up the 
Arkansas River; we being thus* now in touch with 
the strong and warlike population that, led by 
Houston, Travis, Fannin, Crockett, had been fight- 
ing the Spanish arms to the southward of Carson's 
hunting grounds. 

Up to this time Kit Carson had been more 
Favage than civilized. He had never cast a vote 
for any office. He had lived on the product 
of his rifle. He had learned the habits of the wild 
men and wild animals of the West. Yet he seems 
to have gained something of that forcefulness and 
self-confidence which sooner or later is bound to 
impress itself upon others; for on May twenty-ninth 
of 1843 we find Fremont again sending for him, and 
asking his services as guide for his second expedition. 

This time it was Fremont's purpose to connect his 



KIT CARSON 243 

last year's work with the Pacific Coast surveys which 
had been begun by Wilkes. All know how Fremont 
exceeded his orders, how his wife pluckily held back 
from him the knowledge of his recall, and how this 
transcontinental expedition, by no means the first, 
though one of the most widely acclaimed, made its 
way over grounds new to Fremont but old to Carson. 
The first part of the journey was among the old 
trapping grounds along the North Fork of the Platte 
and on the Sweetwater, thence to Salt Lake — all 
points fully known to the fur trade many years 
before. The journey thence ran to Fort Hall and 
along the perfectly determined trail northwest to the 
Columbia River. Fremont then pushed on to Tlamath 
Lake, Oregon, heading thence for California. 

This country between the Tlamath Lake and the 
Sacramento valley was new even to Carson. Every- 
body supposed* that there was a great river, known 
as the Buena Ventura, which rose on the west side 
of the Rocky Mountains at a point directly opposite 
the headwaters of the Arkansas, and flowed westward 
directly into the Pacific ocean. The little fact of 
the Sierra Nevada mountain range was wholly over- 
looked. 

Carson honestly did his best, but he was in the 



*In spite of the Gallatin map, two years earlier. V. Chapter 
IV, Vol. Ill; "Early ETxplorers of the Trans-Missouri." 



214 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

hands of a leader who undertook to cross the Sierras 
with a pack-train where there was six feet of 
snow, and with a party the total number of which 
counted only two men that had ever before worn 
snowshoes in all their lives! Never was there poorer 
mountaineering or worse leadership than this. But 
it was not Kit Carson that was responsible. 

After very many hardships, the expedition worked 
to the south and southeast of the Tlamath country, 
and got down near to what is now known as Pyramid 
Lake. Then they started across for the Sacramento, 
not having discovered the fabled Buena Ventura. 
Carson, quiet, not boasting, openly confessing his 
ignorance of a country he had never seen, none the 
less in these hard conditions proved serviceable as a 
guide. He pushed on ahead, and from a peak of 
the Sierras got a glimpse of the Coast Range. He 
had not seen this Coast Range chain for seventeen 
years, but now he noted two little mountains that 
seemed familiar to him. He told his leader that if 
only they could win across the Sierras, they would 
presently be in a country of warmth and plenty. 

The men by that time were eating their saddle 
leathers, the mules were eating each other's tails. It 
was a starving, freezing time, this foolish bit of 
mountain work, such as in all his trapping experience 
Carson never saw equalled. Yet at last they did reach 



KIT CAESON 245 

Sutter's Fort, on March sixth, 1844, two thousand 
miles from Fort Hall. Some of the men were phys- 
ically ruined and mentally deranged from their suf- 
ferings. It was military and not mountain leader- 
ship that was responsible for all this. 

But our continually traveling man, this little man, 
Kit Carson, was not to have any rest even in the 
pleasant valley of the Sacramento. We find the 
expedition soon starting East again, now by way 
of the San Jose valley, over the Sierras to the 
Mojave Eiver, country long known to the traveling 
trappers. Here Carson and his friend Godey con- 
ducted a little enterprise of their own, undertaken 
in sheer knight-errantry, in behalf of a party of 
Mexicans that had been nearly annihilated by the 
Indians. These two men rode a hundred miles in 
thirty hours, and alone attacked a large camp of 
Indians, killing two of them and stampeding the 
remainder. 

The Fremont party arrived at Bent's Fort on the 
Arkansas July second, 1844. They had traveled 
somewhere between thirty-five hundred and four thou- 
sand miles, had circumnavigated the mysterious 
"Great Desert," and for eight months had never been 
out of sight of ice and snow. Fremont was able to 
report upon the great Columbia Eiver, and he and 
his contemporaries did not hesitate to extol the value 



24^6 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

of Oregon as a gateway of the Asiatic trade — a line 
of commerce which for half a century did little to 
establish the truth of their prophecy. 

This, then, was the end of the first exploration 
of the Eockies accompanied by thermometer and 
barometer rather than by trap sack and "possible 
bag." It was of value. If we were asked what was 
the most valuable result of this second expedition of 
Eremont, we should be obliged to answer that it 
was his mention of the great value of the Western 
grasses. Fremont was an observer, a chronicler, a 
writer. It was he that first began to bring back ac- 
curate story of the resources of the West. 

The mineral wealth of the West, over which the 
trappers had tramped for a quarter of a cen- 
tury, was as yet unsought and unsuspected by Fre- 
mont or any one else. It was to be first the fur trade, 
then the mining trade, then the cattle trade in 
the trans-Mississippi West; and after that the agri- 
cultural life, followed by the days of swift transpor- 
tation, of change, of transition and expansion and 
gourd-like growth in all visible ways. 

We are now well forward in the third era of Kit 
Carson's career. If at first he was a trapper and hun- 
ter in order that he might become fit guide, during 
the third stage of his life he was to be accepted as 
the authorized guide of the most important prelim- 



KIT CARSON 247 

inaries for the wesit-bound movement of the trans- 
Mississippi population. After the close of the sec- 
ond Fremont expedition, and during the year 1845, 
Carson tried to be a ranchman or farmer, pitching 
his tents for the time about fifty miles east of Taos. 
It was of no avail. Fremont called for him once more. 
The farm was sold for half its .value, and once 
more Carson set his face toward the West, in com- 
pany with a Fremont now older, better seasoned and 
of better judgment. A more direct trail across 
the Great Basin and into California was desired than 
that taken either in going or returning on the second 
expedition. 

Carson was the one to go ahead. He traveled 
alone for sixty miles west of the Great Salt Lake, 
directly into the desert, and the rest of the 
party came up to his signal smoke. Thence they 
pushed on to the Carson River, searching still for 
a new pass over the Sierras into the valley of the 
San Joaquin. At last they won across, as did the 
earlier trappers, and again they reached Sutter's Fort 
in due time. A branch of the main party, that headed 
by Talbott, did not appear at the appointed meeting 
place. It was Carson, of course, Carson the traveler, 
who was despatched down the San Joaquin valley to 
discover the truth of a rumor that Talbott and his 



248 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

party had appeared in tliat locality. N'eedless to 
say the wanderers were found. 

Now there broke out the Mexican imbroglio, in 
which the part of Fremont is well known. For a 
time Fremont's party moved north, along the Sacra- 
mento, thence toward the Columbia Eiver. They did 
not know that war had been declared between the 
United States and Mexico. Lieutenant Gillespie, 
hot on their trail, brought the message that hos- 
tilities had broken out. In Oregon, in the Tlamath 
country, came the night attack in which Basil La- 
jeunesse and three others of the party were killed. 
Carson saw his companion, a brave Delaware Indian, 
stand up and receive a half-dozen arrows from unseen 
foes. He joined the pursuit in the dark; and later, 
on the backward trail to California with Gillespie, 
helped execute the stern mountain vengeance on 
the Tlamaths, leading the mountaineers in all their 
desperate little fights. 

The exploring party had now become military, and 
so the flag, led and backed by American moun- 
taineers, went up above a Western empire. As to 
the services of this far-traveling mountain man 
to his leader and to his country, we can 
scarcely overestimate them. Some idea of the 
confidence in which he was now held mav 



KIT CAESON 249 

be gathered from the fact that, after the Fre- 
mont operations in California, Carson was sent 
with despatches to Washington, in order that the 
government might know what was happening on the 
far-away Pacific slope. 

He started on September fifteenth, 1846, and it 
was asked of him that he make the entire trip 
to Washington inside of sixty days; this at a 
time when there was not a foot of railway west 
of the Missouri, and when all the country from the 
Pacific to the Missouri was more or less occupied with 
hostile savages. None the less Carson started, the 
first overland rider to bear despatches on a continu- 
ous journey of this nature. 

By October sixth he was far toward the eastward, 
across the Rockies, when he met General Kearney's 
column. Kearney ordered Carson to turn back and 
guide him westward to California. Without a mur- 
mur the little blue-eyed man remarked: ^^As the 
General pleases." He did not stop to visit his 
own family at Taos, but went back once more 
to lead the west-bound flag. By December third 
the slow column had reached California, and here 
it met more warlike experiences than it liked or 
had believed possible. The California Mexicans that 
fell upon Kearney's column were fighters. They 
killed fifty of the Americans, surrounded the re- 



250 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

mainder, and bade fair to exterminate the entire ex- 
pedition. 

Witness again the serrice of the scout and guide. 
Carson and Lieutenant Beale of the ISTavy were 
sent out as special messengers to San Diego. 
In some way they got through the beleaguering lines, 
and after a perilous journey arrived at San Diego 
and secured the desired help. This sort of thing 
was nothing new to Carson. It was so severe for 
Beale that he went deranged, and it took him two 
years to recover from his journey, brave man and 
bold as he was. The Army and Navy had not the 
seasoning of the American mountain men, the hardi- 
est breed ever grown on the face of the globe. 

At Los Angeles Carson finally rejoined Fremont, 
in time for that tempest in a teapot wherein Fremont 
and Kearney fell at swords' points. These things 
are of no moment, yet it is significant that in March, 
1847, Carson was sent once more as despatch bearer 
to Washington. He went light and speedy as before, 
met the Indians on the Gila, fouglit them and won 
through. This time he reached Washington, after 
his long and steady ride across New Mexico and 
down the Arkansas Eiver to the Missouri, arriving 
in the month of June, after having made four thou- 
sand miles in three months. We make it in about 
three days to-day. 



KIT CARSON 251 

In Washington Carson met Jessie Benton Fre- 
mont, wife of the "Pathfinder" and daughter of the 
arch-protector of the fur traders and of Fremont, 
Thomas Benton. Carson was now appointed lieuten- 
ant of the rifle corps of the United States Army; a 
commission which, by the way, was never ratified, 
although he did not know this for some months. 
He was sent back, four thousand miles, to bear 
despatches in return. He crossed the Missouri River, 
fought the Comanches at the Point of Rocks, got 
through them, pushed on west as steadily as ever, and 
reached the Virgin River, in the dry Southwest, be- 
fore he met his next Indian fight. He and fifteen 
comrades here stood off three hundred Indians. In 
due time he reached Monterey, and after this he took 
service against the Mexicans on the border for a time. 

So energetic a man cannot be allowed to rest, and 
in the spring of 1848 he is sent back once more to 
Washington. The physical frame of any other man 
except Kit Carson had been by all these journey ings 
too far racked to enable him to make this long and 
hazardous trip. The souls of most men would have 
failed them long ere this. Yet this hardy, tough 
little man, just big enough for steady riding, cheer- 
fully undertakes his third journey across the moun- 
tains as despatch bearer for the United States Army. 

This time he meets Utes and Apaches, fights them, 



252 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

wins through them, and goes on. He stops on this 
trip just for a day to see his family at Taos, aver- 
aging a visit home about once in three years. It is 
here that he learns that he is not a lieutenant, after 
all; but that does not check his loyalty to the flag. 
He goes east now up the Bijou, and down the Platte 
to the Eepublican Fork, in order to dodge certain In- 
dians, who, he hears, are numerous and bad along the 
Arkansas. 

He reaches Washington safe and sound, of course ; 
starts back for New Mexico; and arrives there 
in October, 1848. Figure yourself, if you like, 
as chief actor in a quarter of a century of such trav- 
eling as was done by Kit Carson. His travels are 
given thus in detail that we may have Just estimate 
of the man of those days, of the tremendous demands 
upon his courage and endurance. Only the West 
could produce such a man. 

Now we may picture Kit Carson in the fourth 
stage of his career, as settler and rancher. He was 
at home now, but he knew no rest. He fought the 
Apaches, and guided Colonel Beall against that tribe 
and the Comanches, in an endeavor to round up 
al] the Mexican prisoners in the hands of the In- 
dians, who were to be returned to their own fire- 
sides. After this little expedition Carson was once 
more a man without an occupation. There was a lull 



KIT CARSON 253 

In fighting and scouting. Having no profession 
except that of trapper and of guide, he east about 
him and once more determined to be a ranchman. 
He and his friend Maxwell established a ranch fifty 
miles west of Taos, at what is known as Eayado or 
liezado. Again he joined an expedition against the 
Apaches, a day and a half to the southeast, a disas- 
trous expedition, in which he was not leader, but 
might better have been. At another time he helped 
chase some Apache thieves, and assisted in the kill- 
ing of five of them, being always desired in these 
errands of swift punishment. Our army could never 
catch the Apaches, the Nez Perces, the Comanches, 
the Crows, the Blackfeet. Kit Carson always could 
and did. 

This Indian fighting, however, did not bring money 
to his coffers; therefore in 1850 we find him and a 
partner taking a band of horses from New Mexico up 
to Fort Laramie, a journey of five hundred miles.* 
After this followed some more horse stealing on the 
part of the Indians, yet more punitive expeditions, 
and considerable amateur sheriffing, for which ser- 
vice Carson had become a necessity in the district. 
He was not afraid. He could read the signs of the 
trails. He could ride. 



*The beginning of the New Mexican branch of the Long Trail, 
later to become famous in the cattle trade. 



254 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

In 1851 Carson and Maxwell tried tlieir hands at 
a bit of tlie Santa Fe trade themselves, although this 
was long after the glory of the old-time wagon trade 
has departed. They got a train load of goods at St. 
Louis, and started westward up the Arkansas, after 
the old-fashioned way. They met the Cheyennes, 
always ambitious to acquire tax title of the plains to 
such valuable property as this. Carson knew that 
the protestations of these Cheyennes were not to 
be believed, and told the Indians that they could 
neither deceive him nor frighten him; yet with diplo- 
macy equal to his courage, he edged on and on for 
three doubtful days, farther and farther to the west- 
ward, and so at last came safe. Kit Carson was no 
blusterer and no swashbuckler, but was first and last 
of all a good business man. He knew that it was 
good judgment to keep out of a fight whenever pos- 
sible, which he did. 

And now comes one of the most romantic, indeed 
one of the most pathetic pages in the whole history 
of this brave man, if not in all Western history. Ee- 
belling at the tameness of ranching and horse trading 
and wagon trafficking, longing once more for the 
freedom of the trapping trail. Kit sent word about 
among his old friends, the free traders of the 
Eockies. A party of eighteen old-time long-haired 
men was made up ; and thus they sallied forth, with 



KIT CARSON 265 

rifle and ax and pack and jingling trap chains, in 
the fashion of the past, making once more deep 
into the heart of the Rockies. They visited the Ar- 
kansas, the Green, the Grand, all the loved and lova- 
ble parks of the mountains. They came back through 
the Raton Mountains, bearing with them abundant 
fur. They said that it was their last trail ; that they 
had seen the old streams they loved, in order that 
they might "shake hands with them and say good- 
by !" This expedition was made for sheer love of the 
old life, which they knew had now gone by forever. 
The settlement of the West was at hand, and this they 
knew very well. No wonder that it brought them 
sadness! We to-day may grieve in some measure 
over the dignity and glory of those days gone by. 

We might believe that by this Kit Carson would 
have had enough traveling, and would have been 
content to bound his ambitions by the little moun- 
tain valleys that lay about him in New Mexico. 
Not so, however; for we find his next exploit to 
be the unusual one of a sheep drive to far-off Cali- 
fornia. He assembled a band of six thousand five 
hundred sheep, and following by easy stages along 
the old mountain trails with which he was so famil- 
iar, at length arrived with his herd, in August, 1853, 
at his far-off destination. He sold his sheep at the 



256 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

good price of five dollars and a half a head, this 
being the most considerable and most profitable 
speculation in which he had ever engaged in all 
his life. 

He remained for a time in California and looked 
about him, but he found California no longer a wil- 
derness occupied by wandering and infrequent trap- 
pers, but a land overflowing with gold, and ten- 
anted with a restless and swiftly increasing popula- 
tion. He saw a San Francisco of fifty thousand souls 
Bpring up as by magic within sight of those two little 
hills of the Coast Eange that had marked the land 
of salvation for Fremont and his party in their starv- 
ing journey across the Sierras. He found himself 
a hero in this new and busy San Francisco; but he 
was ever unfamiliar with the art of heroing, so pres- 
ently he left the town and returned again to New 
Mexico, traveling this time by the old trail to the 
copper mines, by which he had led Fremont in his 
first journey east from southern California. 

Carson was now living in a West experiencing sud- 
den and general change. The old West was nearly 
gone, and all its ancient ways. The government at 
Washington was familiar with the doings of this 
quiet little man of New Mexico, and it was suggested 
that he would make a good Indian agent for the dis- 
trict of New Mexico. Witness, therefore, the last 



KIT CAESON 257 

stage of Kit Carson's career, that of counselor and 
guide to those savage peoples whose enemy and con- 
queror he had been. 

At this time the Utes and the Jicarilla Apaches 
were rebellious, and one of Carson's first acts was 
to ride two hundred and fifty miles into the Ute 
country. He led the forces that broke up the 
coalition between the Utes and the Apaches. It was 
Carson, old Indian fighter, who was one of the first to 
say that the Indians must be "rounded up and taught 
to till the soil." This was his belief even at the time 
when he acted as guide for Colonel St. Vrain and 
his New Mexican volunteers, in the expedition that 
routed the Indians at the Saugache Pass. 

The Indians that had feared Carson in the past 
came at length to trust him, and indeed to love him. 
He was known as "father" by many a warlike tribe. 
Thus he became the friend of the Cheyennes, the Ar- 
upahoes and the Kiowas, peoples scattered over a 
wide range of country. Behold now, therefore, our 
trapper, guide and scout fairly settled in life. Re- 
member also that he was not the guide of Fremont 
in that last fatal, starving expedition when, blun- 
dering foolishly once more into the wilderness of 
the Eockies in the winter-time, and undertaking the 
wild project of crossing eight feet of snow with a 
pack-train, that officer once more came near pay- 



258 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

ing the penalty of his ignorance by his own life 
and the lives of all his party. 

It was Bill Williams who was guide this time, 
a Bill Williams that had not been trapping 
on the Del Norte for years, and w^ho might have been 
forgiven memory less keen than had been Carson's 
when he saw the two little peaks, far away in the 
Coast Eange, in that other starving march of this 
same leader. It was to Taos that the enfeebled sur- 
vivors of Fremont's disastrous expedition found their 
way in search of help. If Kit Carson reproached his 
former "leader" it is not on record. Never was there 
a leader whose follies won him greater praise. 

Later in his life, leaving the United States serv- 
ice as Indian agent, Carson was made colonel of a 
regiment of New Mexican volunteers, during the 
War of the Eebellion. He was brevetted brigadier- 
general of volunteers. In the closing years of his 
life he was known as "the general" among his 
friends, just as he was always known as "father" 
among the Indians who dwelt about him. 

Kit Carson's death occurred at Fort Lyon, Colo- 
rado, May twenty-third, 1869, the immediate cause 
being an aneurism of the aorta. Eight years before, 
Carson had sustained a bad fall, and had been dragged 
for a distance by his horse. From this hurt he never 
fully recovered, '^Vere it not for this," said he, 



KIT CAESON 259 

meaning his mishap, ^'I might live to be one hundred 
years of age." Yet, knowing that he was doomed, 
he lived bravely and sweetly as ever, and to the end 
remained as unpretentious as during his early days. 

"It was wonderful," s'ays the chronicler who saw his 
last hours and who heard most of the biography of Kit 
Carson read in the presence of the hero himself, "it 
w^as wonderful to read of the thrilling deeds and 
narrow escapes of this man, and then look at the 
quiet, modest, retiring but dignified little man who 
had done so much. He was one of nature's noble- 
men, a true man in all that constitutes manhood, 
pure, honorable, truthful and sincere, of noble im- 
pulses; a knight-errant, ever ready to defend the 
weak against the strong without reward other than 
his own conscience. His was a great contempt for 
noisy braggarts of every sort." 

So, surrounded by his friends, facing the impend- 
ing end with his customary bravery. Kit Carson 
passed away. There was a struggle and a fatal hem- 
orrhage. "Doctor — compadre, — adiosT he cried. 
"This is the last of the general," said his friend. 
So passed one of the last of the great Westerners. 

It was nearly time now for all the old mountain 
men to put up the rifle. The day of the plow was 
following hard upon them. 



CHAPTER II 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 



To-day we think in straight lines. We believe, ig- 
norantly, that our forefathers moved directly west- 
ward from their former homes. We do not ask how 
they did it, but think that in some way they must 
have done so. Dwellers in Chicago think of New 
York, and it means New York in a straight line due 
east. They think of California, and it implies a 
straight line due west. To us of to-day all railroads 
run without curves, and are governed only by time- 
schedules, which annually grow shorter. Geography is 
well-nigh a lost art. Indeed, there is but little use for 
it, since the time-tables of the great railways answer 
all our questions so conclusively. To-day it mat- 
ters not to us what may be the course of a journey; 
the sole question is as to the time that journey will 
require. The railroad men do our thinking for us. 
We do not concern ourselves with how those good, 
but somewhat old-fashioned folk, our ancestors, got 
about in a countr}^ that once was large. We care 
not at all for matters of down-stream or up-stream. 

In a general way, therefore, we are prone to be- 
260 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 261 

lieve that the way from the Alleghanies to the Mis- 
souri was in a straight line. It was not so. We 
think that the way to the Eockies and across them 
was equally straight, because the railways now make 
it so easy. Yet as a matter of fact the railways 
proceeded, without much difficulty as to exploration, 
to be sure, for nothing new was left for them to dis- 
cover, yet in hesitating and halting steps westward, 
shortening the old trails, destroying the old history, 
wiping out the old geography of the West. 

All America can remember the days when we were 
agitated by the tremendous problem of a line of rails 
across the American continent, a feat so long re- 
garded as chimerical. We knew of California and 
we wished for a road thither, had long wished for it. 
But many years before we had begun to dream of 
an iron road, and many years after we had dreamed 
of it, we made our way from the Missouri to the 
Eockies, over the Eockies to the Pacific, by the 
same methods that had brought us to the heads 
of all our Western rivers. We used the pack-horse 
and the wagon train. Those were the days of the 
heroically great transcontinental trails. It is inter- 
esting to study these ancient land routes; and for our 
purposes we shall start the wagon roads at the Mis- 
souri Eiver, and shall speak chiefly of the two historic 



262 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

and great Western pathways, that by the Arkansas 
and that by the Platte. 

Of these two great land trails west of the Missouri, 
one, broken midway, does not deserve actually the 
name of transcontinental trail. This was the old 
Santa Fe trail, which could be called continuous 
only as far as the Spanish province of New Mexico. 
Commerce got westward even so far as California 
in some fashion, now and again, from Taos and the 
old city of Santa Fe, but Spanish trails and the old 
trapping roads west of Xew Mexico were commonly 
concerned with the pack-train and not the wagon. 

The other overland trail, and the greatest of all 
American roads, if we measure length and impor- 
tance as well, was the ancient Oregon trail up the 
Platte, over the South Pass and down the Columbia; 
a trail forgotten by most of the young men of to-day, 
and existing no more to terrify the young women 
whom young men marry, as they did in the times of 
our fathers, when moving West meant tearing out 
the heart. 

As to the theory of straight lines, Lieutenant Pike 
tells us that the first men to reach Santa Fe did not 
go straight westward, but also wandered up the 
aboriginal highway of the Platte valley, over what 
was later to be the course of the Oregon trail, turn- 
ing to the southward when far up the stream, and 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 263 

following the South Fork of the Platte down into 
the Rockies, which would bring the traveler within 
wilderness-touch of the Spanish settlements. La 
Lande, the perfidious trader, who so sadly left in the 
lurch his patron, the merchant Morrison of Kaskas- 
kia, and took up his permanent abode in Santa 
Fe, is thought to have reached that city, in the year 
1804, by this route; and it is known that James 
Purcell (or James Pursley, as Pike has the spelling) 
was directed to Santa Fe in the year 1805 by some 
Indians whom he met on the upper Platte. 

This route by the Platte was not, however, either 
the permanent or the original one. Indeed, the first 
expedition between the Spanish and the American 
settlements came, strangely enough, from the west, 
and not from the east, and was undertaken by the 
Spaniards as early as 1720. Then, in 1739, the 
Mallet brothers. Frenchmen from the settlements 
along the Mississippi, started for New Mexico by 
the strange route of the upper Missouri River, getting 
far up into the big bend of the Missouri before they 
discovered that they were going quite the wrong way ! 
Their belief that the Spanish settlements could be 
reached by way of the head streams of the Missouri 
is strange confirmation of our doctrine that early 
traveling man ever clung to the waterways. The 
river — it would lead anywhere! The Mallet party 



264 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

returned in 1740, some of them by way of tte 
Arkansas Eiver, which presently brought them out 
at New Orleans! 

We may therefore discover that neither the Mis- 
souri nor the Platte could have been called the ac- 
cepted highway into the lower West at the time Lieu- 
tenant Pike set out to find the headwaters of the Red 
Eiver. There is a shrewd doubt as to Pike's innocence 
in getting over on the head of the Rio Grande instead 
of the Red River. It was at least a lucky mistake; 
and his captivity among the Spaniards was productive 
of very good results to the United States later 
on, one of its most important results being his sug- 
gesting the route along the Arkansas, instead of 
the Platte, for the west-bound travelers. It was 
strong-legged, stout-hearted Zebulon who told of the 
profits of the possible Spanish trade, and credit is 
usually given him for first outlining the historic 
trail along the Arkansas. 

It grew shorter and shorter, this wagon trail to the 
West, as the traders came to know th-e country. 
The government surveyed a fine way for the cara- 
vans, which took them around the dangerous Cimar- 
ron desert, and clung to the waters a trifle longer; 
yet the travelers would have none of it, but built 
their trail so direct from Independence to Santa Fe 
that not even those air-line lovers, the railway engi- 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 2(55 

neers, could so very much improve it when they came 
to make their iron trail between those two points. 

One finds something uncanny when he reflects 
upon the discoveries of these Western regions. The 
ancient ways seem to have lain ready and wait- 
ings the lines of travel simply falling into the fore- 
ordained plan, so that there remains no extraor- 
dinary credit to any venturer, no matter how early. 
For instance, we know that our hardy young soldiers, 
Lewis and Clark, to whom we habitually ascribe the 
credit of being the first white men up the great 
waterway of the Missouri, were preceded by half a 
century by the Frenchman, Sieur de la Verendrye, 
who took his two sons and started west by way of 
the Great Lakes in 1742, jumped from the Red River 
of the North to the Mandan villages on the Missouri, 
and explored the region along the Missouri, the Yel- 
lowstone and the Bighorn rivers, just one hundred 
years before Fremont ^'"discovered" the Rockies! 

De la Verendrye is thought to have been the first 
man of the North to see the Rockies ; yet back of him 
we have Nicollet and Champlain, and all those hardy 
ancients who sought cheerfully and hopefully for the 
China Sea by way of the Green Bay portage, and the 
Wisconsin and Minnesota rivers, in search of the 
fabled ^^Asian Strait/^ which later was practically 



2C,C, THE WAY TO THE WEST 

materialized in the interlocking Western rivers of 
America. 

As to Pike's journey across the plains, we must 
know that the Spaniards had sent out an ex- 
fpedition, under Malgares, to meet him or antici- 
pate him. The Spanish leader who thus ventured 
boldly so far to the east to head off this dreaded 
invasion of the Northern whites, and to set the 
Indians against them, must have traveled some- 
what along this same pre-ordained trail of the Ar- 
kansas. Not all Spain could keep the feet of the 
young Anglo-Saxons out of that trail. There were 
always the adventurers; and there were always the 
trails there, ready, waiting, expectant, prepared for 
them. There is no reading so thrilling as the bare 
truth about our West; and the most thrilling part. of 
it is the awesome feeling that our venturers were 
after all themselves but puppets in a grim and awful 
game. There lay the Missouri, the Platte, the Ar- 
kansas ; and stretching out to meet them reached the 
Columbia and the Colorado. It was appointed, it 
was foregone! 

Among those to go out early into the unknown 
Southwest, after Lieutenant Pike had told us some 
few things regarding the pueblos of old Spain among 
the mountains of the Eockies, were the fur trader 
Phillibert, and the traders Chouteau and De Munn, 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 267 

of St. liouis, who bought out Phillibert's goods and 
men in the Eockies. Phillibert had planned a 
rendezvous on Huerfano Creek. This was in 1815, 
the year following that in which Phillibert had 
made his first trip into that Western region. 

These St. Louis men met the officials of Santa 
Fe, and were warned out of the country. Naively, 
since they could not trade in New Mexico, they 
started for the Columbia River, by way of the high 
mountains of Colorado ; and the mountains, of course, 
stopped them. They fell back on the Arkansas, were 
caught by the Spaniards, had their goods confiscated, 
and so lost three years of time as well. Not even this 
pointed advice as to Spanish preferences served to 
hold back the west-bound men, and no dbubt they 
sent out some party for Santa Fe every year there- 
after, until they had their way, and until the Anglo- 
Saxon grasp was fixed upon that sleepy old South- 
west, which lay winking in the sun a couple of cen- 
turies belated by the way. 

The Spaniards were suspicious, as are ever the 
slothful, and they made a practice of imprisoning 
the whites that got down into their country. They 
imprisoned Pike, they imprisoned Merriwether, an 
intrepid trader who reached that country in 1819; 
and history tells us how, in 1812, they imprisoned 
the first party of the white traders to venture into 



268 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

New Mexico after the return of Lieutenant Pike, 
the twelve men who made up the party of Baird, 
McKnight and Chambers, commonly called the 
party of McKjiight, Beard and Chambers. This 
gallant little company they kept in the fearsome 
penitentiary at Chihuahua for nine long and weary 
years, — a fate terrible enough, one would certainly 
think, to warn away all other adventurers from a 
neighborhood so hostile. 

As to this first and most unfortunate of the early 
trading expeditions to the Southwest, that of Baird, 
McKnight and Chambers, ~ there is first-hand in- 
formation in the form of a personal letter from J. 
M. Baird, of Louisville, Kentucky, a grandson of the 
early trader that helped to lead the way of com- 
merce across the plains. Mr. Baird writes : 

^^As to the expedition of Baird, Chambers and 
McKnight, it is often spoken of as that of 
^McKnight, Beard and Chambers.' Gregg, in his 
book '^The Commerce of the Prairies,' published in 
1846 (I think), first mentioned the matter. He 
derived his information from James Baird's sons, 
and they were much disgusted to have him print the 
name 'Beard.' All other writers seem to have de- 
rived their particulars from him. James Baird was 
my grandfather. He was personally known to Lieut. 
Zebulon Pike, had known him at Fort Duquesne and 



THE SANTA FE TEAIL 269 

at Erie. Baird went to St. Louis in 1810, where he 
again met Lieutenant Pike upon his return from 
Mexico, and learned from him the possibilities of 
trade with that country. 

"Upon hearing of the success of the Hidalgo rev- 
olution, and believing the embargo upon trade with 
the United States raised, he organized a venture with 
Chambers and McKnight, left St. Charles, Mo., May 
1, 1812, and reached Santa Fe in regular course, to 
find the embargo rigorously enforced. He was ar- 
rested and imprisoned in Chihuahua prison for nine 
years and three months, until released by Iturbide in 
1821. Chambers and McKnight started back at once. 
McKnight was killed by the Indians on the Arkansas 
River. Chambers succeeded in getting back to St. 
Louis. Baird started back two months later, could 
find no company, and rode alone from Santa Fe to 
St. Louis. This ride has been credited to Bicknell 
and one Kennedy or Kendall, but James Baird was 
the man that did it. 

"Baird and Chambers organized a second expedi- 
tion in 1822. They started too late, and were caught 
in a blizzard at the crossing of the Arkansas, where 
their animals froze to death. Tliey were compelled 
to remain the entire winter upon the island at that 
place. It was Baird and Chambers' second expedi- 
tion that made the caches near there (in 1822), 



270 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

and near where Dodge City now stands. Inman in 
liis 'Old Santa Fe Trail/ chapter 3, says Bicknell* 
crossed the river at the Caches in 1812. No other 
caches were made in that vicinity. Bicknell was a 
trader with the latan Indians and did not go into 
Mexico until after Baird and Chambers' second ven- 
ture, which was made in 1822. However, it was 
through some of BicknelFs men writing from Frank- 
lin, Mo., to my grandmother, in 1816, that she 
learned of grandfather's fate, they saying that, they 
heard of it from the Indians. 

^'Baird, Chambers and McKnight followed the 
course marked for them by Lieutenant Pike, and 
that course became the great Santa Fe trail. The 
'Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe R. R. follows practically 
the same course. If any one is entitled to credit for the 
selection of the route. Lieutenant Pike ought to 
have it. However, my purpose is to ask you to cor- 
rect the name Beard to read Baird. If one will 
refer to 'American State Papers,' YoL 4, folio 207, 
and Executive Papers, p. 197, 8th Vol., 15th Con- 
gress, he will see that it is Baird.'' 

This communication would seem to a certain ex- 
tent to discount the claims on reputation of William 
Becknell, generally known as the ''father of the 



*The spelling of this name is by most authorities given as 
"Becknell," which is thought to be correct. 



THE SAXTA FE TRAIL 271. 

Santa Fe trail." It ascribes the credit for the 
original selection of the Arkansas Kiver route to 
Pike, with what justice we may ourselves determine 
as well as any. Our venturesome Southerners, of the 
Baird, McKnight and Chambers party, had lain in 
jail for nine years before John McKnight, the 
brother of Robert McKnight, in the year 1821, under- 
took the long journey to Chihuahua, which seems to 
have resulted in the setting free of all these Ameri- 
cans. Coming back to the United States over the 
Arkansas River trail, Baird and the two McKnights 
met the Ohio man, Hugh Glenn, and his associate or 
friend, Jacob Fowler, who were already at Taos, 
regardless of the ill-fortune of their predecessors in 
the hazardous game of prairie commerce. Becknell 
himself did not start out until 1821, and he did not 
intend to trade in Santa Fe, but only went thence 
after he had met some Mexicans on the headwaters 
of the Arkansas, who persuaded him to take his 
goods to Santa Fe instead of trading them among the 
Indians. Hugh Glenn and Becknell were thus both 
at Santa Fe during the winter of 1821-22. 

That following summer Braxton Cooper and his 
sons, as well as Becknell, made trips to Santa Fe,and it 
seems to have been on this second trip that Becknell 
attained the distinction commonly accorded him. 
He took three wagons through to Santa Fe, and in- 



272 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

stead of hugging the iVrkaiisas clear out to the 
mountains, he struck off southwest toward San 
Miguel, by way of the Cimarron desert, the risky but 
shorter route to which the later traders adhered ever 
after, in spite of surveys and all else. It is really 
only upon the ground of his wagons and this cut- 
off angle that Becknell is entitled to the glory of 
his title as "father of the Santa Fe trail." 

Our prisoners, who nine years before had taken 
the chance of the far-off Southwestern trade, were 
willing to take another chance, for no sooner had 
they reached the States than they outfitted and 
started back again for the Mexican trade. Their 
second party, that which made the famous caches 
referred to in the grandson's letter above, was made 
in 1822. By that time there was little glory left 
for any one; and indeed, when we come to sift it, 
there was never very much glory in any part of the 
history of the Santa Fe trail. It was not a pathway 
of heroes. The true hero trail lay farther to the 
north, as we shall presently see. 

The first mergers, the first combinations of capital 
ever made in the commerce of America began here 
on the far-off prairies, when the traders of the 
Arkansas began to band up and pool their 
outfits for mutual protection. The strength of 
these great companies rendered the danger of at- 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 273 

tack by Indians very slight, and it is a fact 
that but few lives were ever lost on the Santa 
Ee trail, scarce a dozen in a dozen years. It 
was indeed irony of fate that splendid Jedediah 
Smith, the hero of such tremendous undertakings in 
the mountains of the Northwest, should meet his fate 
while hunting for a water hole in the hated desert 
of the Cimarron, afar down in the dry Southwest.* 

By 1824 the Santa Fe trade was well organized. 
The route was proved feasible, and the business as- 
sured of profit, wherefore many went into it, and 
presently the old trail became a great road, later to 
be very prominent in the history of the West. The 
Spaniards did their best to keep on both sides of 
the fence in this matter. They wanted the goods 
of the Americans, but hated the Americans them- 
selves. They tried to kill the trade with excessive 
frontier duties, yet allowed smuggling and bribery 
to any limit; and these latter two industries were 
accepted as part of the conditions of the trade. The 
greatest loss of life began to occur when the fight- 
ing Texans from below, actuated by a desire for re- 
venge and pillage, began to push up and to harass the 
commerce which was proving so profitable to Mexico, 
in spite of Mexico's vacillation. 



*V. Chapter IV, Vol. Ill; "Early Explorers of the Trans- 
Missouri," 



2U THE WAY TO THE WEST 

Tliese fighting Texans traveled far to the north of 
the trail, indeed, and followed the Mexicans into 
their villages, where they killed them in numbers. 
Texas, we must remember, was not yet a state, and 
little answer was made to the wail of the thrifty 
traders, who besought the United States government 
to give them protection against the Texans. The 
latter did some things not altogether pleasant to 
recount, but were for the most part serving nearly 
right the government of the United States, which 
could so long hesitate in accepting Houston's gift 
of Texas, the ^^ride adorned for her espousal;" 
which, indeed, so long hesitated to believe that there 
was or could be a West really great. Small indeed 
were some of the "great" men of that time; and 
small are some of our great men to-day. 

The common belief is that all the capital engaged 
in this trade toward the Southwest was American cap- 
ital, and that the enterprises ran all one way. This 
was not the case, for by 1843 the Mexican capital 
embarked in the commerce to the Spanish colonies 
was about equal to that of the Americans. The 
trade grew steadily, even subject as it was to the 
caprice of Mexican governments, and of Texas 
privateers on the high seas of the prairies. 

We learn that in 1831 a party of two hundred per- 
sons, with one hundred wagons and two hundred 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 275 

thousand dollars' worth of goods, started for Santa 
Fe. Tills party was notable in that one of its mem- 
bers was Josiah Gregg, a level-headed, shrewd man, 
who was later to become famous as the historian 
of the Santa Fe trail. Nearly all the later 
histories of that highway and its peculiari- 
ties are based upon Gregg's able work; which fact 
he himself points out with a certain plaintiveness in 
his later years (1846), stating that pillagers of his 
papers did not always stop to give him credit. Gregg 
was a big man, a thinker, a man whose sound sense 
would succeed in any time. One likens him to the 
good, sensible business man of to-day, the mainstay 
of our republic, the practical conductor of affairs. 

One detail will serve to show how much in ad- 
vance he was of his time. In 1846 we find the 
Easterner, Francis Parkman, and his friend Shaw, 
killing scores of the great bisons of the plains for 
no better purpose than the securing of the tail for a 
trophy. It makes one blush to read of such waste- 
ful barbarity as this, which could kill tons and tons 
of such creatures and leave the meat to rot on the 
ground. Our sensitive Eastern writer Parkman, 
keen mind and able pen as were his, was a very sav- 
age in his lust for "sport;" indeed worse than any 
savage, for the latter never killed for sport alone. 
Gregg was neither a Parkman nor a modern "^^over 



276 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

of nature/' but something much better, a man of 
forethought and of good sense. His protest at the 
waste of life and food in the wanton killing of buffalo 
is one of the most worthy tilings of his worthy book. 
He prophesied what Parkman could not see with all 
his florid pictures of the West that was to be — a 
West soon to be barren of the great game that did 
so much to win that West from savagery. The 
wicked wastefulness of the killing of the buffalo was 
one of the American national crimes. Stout 
Josiah Gregg saw it and deplored it, knowing as he 
did that much of the success of the Southwest trade 
ever depended upon the buffalo. 

As to the distances and the direction of the ancient 
trail, we may consider it as starting at the old West- 
em town of Independence, on the Missouri Eiver, 
and extending properly no farther than the town of 
Santa Fe, in New Mexico. Many traders went on 
down into Old Mexico, as far as Chihuahua, which 
city so many of the first adventurers knew against 
their will. We have heard of Kit Carson, as a team- 
ster, as far to the south as Chihuahua, and know that 
in 1828 he hired out there to Robert McKnight, one 
of the long-time prisoners in that city, later promi- 
nently identified with the history of the trail. Dif- 
ferent Missouri towns outfitted parties for the trad- 
ing to the Southwest, among these prominently St. 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 277 

Louis, and the less important point of Franklin. We 
may consider the Missouri River as our frontier at 
this epoch, and find most of our traders among 
those who lived near the border or were concerned 
in business ventures in that neighborhood. Assur- 
edly this talk of the Santa Fe trade was the first 
Western bee in the Kit Carson bonnet, while he was 
yet a bo}-' in Missouri. 

The course of the old trail was astonishingly di- 
rect. It left little to be gained in distance saving, 
or in the essential qualities of grass and water, 
except along the cut-off over the Cimarron desert, 
which the travelers would not forego. The first sec- 
tion of the trail, that from Independence to Council 
Grove, the place where the wagon trains usually 
organized and went into semi-military formation, 
was over a pleasant, safe and easy country, a distance 
of one hundred and forty-three miles, according to 
Gregg. 

Thence the next stage was to the Great Bend of the 
Arkansas, in the line of such modern towns as Galva, 
McPherson and Great Bend, although probably it 
touched the Arkansas at the top of the bend, near the 
village of Ellinwood, the first railway station east of 
Great Bend. This lies in a region now tamed into a 
wheat country and settled with contented farmers, 
raising crops that have, by the education of the years 



278 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

themselves, grown fit to endure that high, dry air, on 
the edge of the once rainless region. It was two hun- 
dred and seventy miles out to the Bend of the Ar- 
kansas, and two hundred and ninety-three miles to 
the noted Pawnee Rock, which to-day has a town 
named for it. Not crossing the Arkansas as yet, the 
trail kept down the western leg of the Great Bend, 
passed the islands known as the Caches, kept up- 
stream for a time to a point twenty miles west of the 
town now known as Dodge City — the same "Dodge" 
so famous in the cattle days — and reached then the 
ford of the Arkansas, which Gregg says was three 
hundred and eighty-seven miles west of Independ- 
ence.* 

This was ahout half way on the journey, and on 
the border line between the United States and the 
Spanish provinces. Gregg makes the jump from 
the safe Arkansas to the risky Cimarron a distance 
of fifty-eight miles, two or three days' travel, and 
without water, as well as without landmarks. The 
erstwhile boom town of Ivanhoe, of which one re- 
members talk in county-seat wars as far back as 
1886, a little town far down in the dr}' country, is 
near the line of the old trail. Reaching the Cimar- 
ron, the trail bent up that doubtful waterway to Cold 



♦other authorities, as for instance Chittenden, make it 392 
piiles. 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 279 

Spring, five hundred and thirty-five miles from In- 
dependence. There it took another leap to the south- 
west, over a country then fairly well known from the 
Spanish end of the line, and over a well defined road, 
which could not be mistaken. 

The Wagon Mound was a point of note, situated 
about six hundred and sixty-two miles west of the 
starting point. One might depart thence for Bent's 
Fort on the Arkansas, located in a country very 
profitable for traders to keep in view ; for above Bent's 
famous hostelry on the mountain branch of the trail 
lay the yet wilder pack-horse commerce of the moun- 
tain trappers' rendezvous, far more romantic and 
profitable, if less safe and steady than the wagon com- 
merce of the prairies. From the Wagon Mound to 
the first settlements of the Mexicans, on the Rio Gal- 
linas, was an easy stage, and to Santa Fe by this time 
all roads of the mountains thereabout pointed. It 
was seven hundred and eighty miles to Santa Fe, ac- 
cording to Gregg, the more modern chronicles making 
it seven hundred and seventy-five miles, the latter 
figures being for a part of the time above, and part 
of the time under the old Gregg estimates, which 
are singularly correct in view of Gregg's facilities. 
The present Santa F6 railway follows the upper or 
mountain leg of the old trail, which went on up the 
Arkansas to Bent's Fort, and did not take the leap 



280 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

intO' the desert. From the Wagon Mound on into 
Santa Fe the railway route is practically identical 
with the old wagon way. • 

Thus we may see that this great highway, broken 
midway and deflected to the southward, was less than 
one thousand miles in length. There was no connec- 
tion, except a rude sort of pack route by way of Taos 
and the Colorado River countr}^, between the end of 
the Santa Fe trail and the California country. The 
wagons did not go that way. The later railway 
drops down along the Rio Grande valley, just as did 
the Chihuahua wagon road; and bends westward far 
below the old trails of Walker and Jedediah Smith, 
who started on their transcontinental voyagings from 
points higher up in the mountains than Santa Fe or 
Taos. 

The w^ay from Santa Fe to California seems to 
have been well known, but the trade did not dare 
to attempt a commerce so distant, and so unprofitable 
as it must have been, consumed by such necessaril)'' 
heavy transportation charges. We speak of the Santa 
Fe trail as one of the great Western highways, but it 
was a halting and broken and arrested highway. It 
was not yet quite time for the straight leap across the 
rivers. The trail clung to the rivers as far as it might, 
and the attempts to cut loose from the streams^ and 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 281 

go straight across from the Red River to Chihuahua, 
proved to be unprofitable or impracticable. 

The total amount of merchandise carried in these 
picturesque caravans of the prairies was perhaps not 
so great as we should imagine, though we must re- 
member that a dollar was larger then than it is 
to-day. The extent of the trade varied from year 
to year, and did not regularly increase; for though 
we note one caravan in 1831 taking out two hundred 
thousand dollars' worth of goods, we find that in 
1841, ten years later, the whole annual trade was but 
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The cli- 
max was in 1843, when goods to the value of four 
hundred and fifty thousand dollars were transported. 

The pay for this came back partly in specie, partly 
in furs, sometimes largely in horses and mules, 
the trade thus bearing a double profit and a 
double risk. The Indians did not care for 
gold or silver so much as they did for horses and 
mules, and diligent enough were their efforts to 
stampede the live stock of the traders. Upon occa- 
sion the United States Army was asked to escort a 
caravan, but this aid was not generally to be expected, 
especially since the worst part of the route, that 
infested by the Comanches, lay west of the then ac- 
cepted western border of the United States. The 
average value of the trade was about one hundred and 



282 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

fifty thousand dollars yearly, aiid the total sum for 
the duration of this strange branch of American com- 
merce was only about three million dollars. 

The goods carried were at first largely prints 
and drillings, for the Mexicans got such goods 
from Vera Cruz on the coast, and only at great 
expense. Later silks, velvets, hardware and the 
general line of American goods began its first west- 
ward way across the American borders. Sometimes 
the stocks were retailed, sometimes sold at wholesale, 
the latter more often when the trader was in a 
hurry. It was a wild, peculiar and fascinating sort 
of commerce, and strong was the hold it naturally 
took upon the people of the Western border. 

This trade was carried on mostly by our Southern- 
Western men, our new-Americans, as we may see by 
the letter of the grandson of James Baird, written 
from Kentucky. Glenn came from Cincinnati, Fowler 
from Covington, Kentucky, most of the other famil- 
iar figures from St. Louis, Franklin and other Mis- 
souri points. Morrison, the merchant of Kaskaskia, 
was a man who came down-stream. The Northern 
man, the man of New England or New York, had 
not yet become very much of a Westerner. The 
West was not yet safe enough for him. Nor indeed 
was he to lead the vanguard of the men who, far to 
the north of the old Santa Fe trail, were building 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 283 

another, a. greater and more significant trail, one 
whose end we do not see even to-day; the men that 
were tapping all the secrets of the upper Rockies, 
that were to lead us to the brink of the Western 
sea and even to point beyond that sea. But for poli- 
tics, the Southerners of to-day, the sons of the old 
daring ones, would admit the virtue of that finger 
pointing over seas. 

There is still in New England something of 
the old timidity, the old unwillingness to see the 
pointing finger, the same un-American tardiness 
to recognize the challenge of the West. Had it 
not been for the fascinations of this upper coun- 
try, for the allurements of the great trail that 
was to run across the continent to the far North- 
west, there had been more competition in the 
Southwest trade, and mayhap a swifter crowding 
of events toward that state of affairs that Park- 
man saw when he visited the Santa Fe trail on his 
way home from the Rockies in 1846 — the volunteers 
of Missouri, kindred to the men of Doniphan, who 
were straggling on out toward Mexico on an er- 
rand of justice that had long been overdue. Shuf- 
fling, angular, awkward, uncouth we may, with Park- 
man, admit these Southern- Western men to have 
been; each man his own commander, reluctant to 
admit a superior officer, as had been the fathers of 



284 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

these men from the time they left the Atlantic 
coast; but they did the work in Mexico. They 
opened the trail forever, and saw to it that the 
borders stretched and spread and gave us room. It 
is of no use to talk polities in questions like these, nor 
is there need to speak of the moralities. It is for the 
most part a matter of transportation. It was the 
Arkansas Kiver trail that conquered Mexico. 

This, then, was the great thing that the Santa Fe 
trail did for us, although we have forgotten it. It 
taught the people of New Mexico that the Americans 
were a greater and stronger people, a more just and 
steadfast people, than those to the south, who had 
done naught in all their lives but butcher and hesi- 
tate, butcher again and vacillate. They were not 
sad to take on the institutions of the United States 
in exchange for those of Spain. The Old World 
had not established its ways on the soil of the 
New World. The gTeatest of all Monroe doctrines 
still prevailed, the doctrine of the fit, the doctrine 
of evolution, of endurance by right, of hardihood 
got by a sane dwelling close to the great things 
of nature. 

Far to the north, the Oregon trail led to California 
and the Orient. The Santa Fe trail, broken as it 
was in its transcontinental flight, points now in the 
same direction. The only ignoble part of the Ameri- 



THE SANT'A FE TRAIL 285 

can story is the history of American politics. All 
politics aside, is it not easy to see that the old broken 
trail is a fate-finger pointing to Mexico and the 
trans-Isthmian canal; to an America wholly Ameri- 
can; and to an Orient that again and by another 
trail is destined to be our West? We may spill our 
oratory, may deplore utterly and sincerely, yet we 
shall not prevail to build any wall high enough to 
stop this thing. The Old World might combine for 
the time against the New, might for a term of years 
conspire to put our venturers in prison; but at last 
it all were futile. Much of the temperate zone of 
the world belongs to a people whose history is but 
the history of a West; it will always so belong while 
the character of that people shall retain the dignity 
and force of those men who "could not otherwise." 

This people is concerned to-day, as it has always 
been, not with sentiment but with self interest. Its 
great movements have been based not on theories but 
on common sense. Its great policies have been founded 
on geography and not on polemics. Its great adversi- 
ties have been those of transportation ; its great suc- 
cesses have been those built on transportation prob- 
lems ably mastered. To-day this American people 
waxes somewhat flamboyantly boastful, according 
lightly and cheerfully to itself the title of the great- 
est nation of the world. It may indeed be such, or 



286 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

potentially such ; but it will retain better claim upon 
that greatness if in all humility it shall remember 
the slow days wherein that greatness was founded, 
wherefrom that greatness grew. Therein lies the im- 
port of the early Western trails. 



CHAPTER III 



THE OREGON TRAIL 



In the distribution of the population of Western 
America, the mouths of many great Western rivers, 
the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Columbia, the Col- 
orado, the Red, the Sacramento, the Arkansas, per- 
haps even the Ohio, were known before their sources 
were fully explored. The journey over the Appa- 
lachians, and the down-stream movements that fol- 
lowed the Mississippi and its greater tributaries, 
were the first concerns of our new-American emi- 
grants. The lower reaches of the great Western riv- 
ers having been utilized, the first two decades of the 
century last past were spent in the search for the 
head waters of these same streams. 

Lewis and Clark followed up the tortuous Missouri 
until they reached at least a practical conclusion as to 
its sources. Lieutenant Pike mistook the upper Rio 
Grande for the head of the Red River, and it cost 
him a long walk to Chihuahua. Yet he was as accu- 
rate as the famous Baron von Humboldt, who thought 
the Pecos River was a tributary of the Red. Major 
Long, in 1820, dropped down from the South Fork 

of the Platte to the head waters of the Cimarron, 
287 



28S THE WAY TO THE WEST 

which he traced to the Canadian, also missing the 
Red River which he sought, and taking the Canadian 
river to be the Red. 

Scores of similar errors were made in those days 
before the maps, but still the explorations went 
on. The head waters of the Columbia, of the Green, 
of the Sacramento or "Buena Ventura," offered chal- 
lenge to many bold men, the story of whose exploits 
forms one of the most glowing chapters of American 
hero history. These divers pursuits, these evidences 
of an up-stream travel and traffic, more properly 
group themselves under our second general head of 
up-stream transportation. Next there was to come 
the day of transportation across the waters, from 
stream to stream. 

Among those men who early in the past century 
pressed out most boldly in the quest for the heads 
of the upper Western waters, we continue to find our 
men of the South very prominent, the sons of the 
men that moved west from Virginia, Kentucky and 
Tennessee into Missouri and other parts of the trans- 
Mississippi. Many of these made the old town of St. 
Louis their general starting point, and St. Louis was, 
in those days, much more a Southern or Western 
town than it is to-day. As in the time of the Santa 
Ee trail, the Western man was still what we should 
call to-day a Southerner. 



THE OREGON TRAIL 289 

The greater number of the leaders of the fur trade 
were properly to be called Western-born citizens. A 
few exceptions to this rule are worthy of note. John 
Jacob Astor was the first of the Eastern merchants 
to send out a commercial expedition into the far West; 
but really the first notable Eastern explorer personally 
to engage in exploring the head waters of distant 
Western rivers was Nathaniel J. Wyeth, of Massachu- 
setts, who, in 1832, led the first continuous expedition 
from New England to the mouth of the Columbia, 
a man whose pluck and energy deserved a better fate 
than he encountered. It was this same Wyeth who, 
in 1834, founded one of the first establishments west 
of the Rockies, that Fort Hall, often mentioned in 
the story of the fur trade, which was afterward sold 
to the Hudson Bay Company. Fort Hall was a 
trading post of much note in earlier times, and it is 
of interest to us at this juncture, in view of the fact 
that it was located on that great roadway later to be 
trod by thousands of feet that had begun their jour- 
ney farther to the eastward than the valley of the 
Mississippi — the roadway to be known as the Oregon 
trail. 

There was early need for a trail to Oregon. The 
first of the hardy trappers of the Northwest told us 
about Oregon; and had we heeded them, we might 
to-day have an Oregon of continuous American terri- 



290 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

tory running nortli to Alaska. Our trappers offered 
us this empire. Our "leaders" lost it for us. As it 
was, we nearly lost what Oregon we have to Great 
Britain and her own hardy trappers. Wyeth and 
his frienda brought back word to the East, which at 
last the ever hesitating, ever doubting Eastern men 
believed. At last we summoned together our senses, 
our halting diplomacy, with the result that we kept 
our marches intact to the Western sea. This we 
were able to do simply because of the individual 
search that had been going on for the head waters 
of the Western streams, because the Western men 
had already made for us that Oregon trail, which 
gave us touch with the far-off American provinces 
beyond the Eockies. 

To-day, to the average resident of the Middle West, 
Oregon seems farther away than California; but up 
to the middle of the last century it was much nearer 
and much better known ; and it was so solely because, 
under the existing conditions of travel, it was more 
accessible. The Santa Fe trail did not go to Cali- 
fornia. The Oregon trail did go to Oregon, and over 
a plain and easy route. 

The Oregon trail left the Missouri River, as did 
the Santa Fe trail, at that early citadel of the trade 
of the West, the town, of Independence. It followed 
up the ancient valley of the Platte, immemorial 




A RETREAT TO THE BLOCKHOUSE 



THE OREGON TRAIL 291 

highway of the tribes, and led to the head waters 
of many streams now historic, even then long 
familiar to many of our early trappers and traders. 

We have heard of Andrew Henry, whose name was 
given to a beautiful lake of the Rockies, as well as 
to a once famous trading post across the range, the 
lieutenant whose man, Etienne Provost, probably dis- 
covered the South Pass. We know of the trader 
Jackson, one of General Ashley's bold mountain 
family, whose name was left to the beautiful valley 
below the Yellowstone Park, called even to-day Jack- 
son's Hole. We have heard of the wanderings of 
Campbell, Fitzpatrick, Sublette, of Jim Bridger, 
and of General Ashley himself, prince of early moun- 
tain traders, father of a bold crew of young succes- 
sors. We shall presently speak of Bonneville and 
his northern wagons, and of Bonneville's man 
Walker, bigger than himself. We must also trace 
a part of the march of the first land party to cross 
this continent, the Astorians, whose broken journey- 
ings down the Snake and Columbia made part of 
the earliest trail-history of the West. 

All these different leaders and individuals had 
much to do with the Oregon trail ; the trail that was 
theroadof the adventurers, and also the first real road 
to the Pacific for that traveler properly to be called 
the home-seeking man. The Missouri River would do 



292 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

for Manuel Lisa and General Ashley and Major 
Henry, and the Snblettes, and the Chouteans, and 
all those others that held the scores of trading posts 
which dotted the upper waters of the Missouri and 
the Yellowstone. The Missouri River and its tribu- 
taries gave them their natural roadways ; but all these 
scattered posts, all this devious ancient roadway of 
the waters, lay far to the northward, on the upper 
curve of a great arc, the winding way traced out by 
Lewis and Clark, the way of the up-stream wan- 
derers. The streams ever appealed to explorers. Any 
man going into unknown country instinctively clings 
to the waterways, near which he always feels safer. 
Yet it was the way between and across the streams 
that spoke most loudly to those settlers that came 
to stay, to till the soil, who brought with them 
household goods, who brought ax and plow as well as 
trap and rifle. The ancient highway for footmen 
and horsemen, which ran up the valley of the Platte 
Eiver, extended out along the chord of this great 
Missouri Eiver arc, along the string of tliis vastt 
bended bow. 

The string of this great bow ran four degrees of 
latitude to the south of the upper curve of the Mis- 
souri. Evidently the line of the bow-string was the 
better way to the Pacific; the more especially since 
itself followed for so great a distance another pre- 



THE OREGON TRAIL 293 

ordained pathway of the waters — that of the river 
Platte, ancient road of the Indian tribes. It was with- 
in natural reason, therefore, that the travelers should 
break away, should leave the upper waterway and 
start directly overland. This came to pass because 
there were now horses to be obtained in the West. 
We are now come to the time of horse transportation ; 
which was the beginning of the day of travel across 
the streams. 

Along this great trail crossing the waters men 
bent their steps toward Oregon and California, 
men from the banks of the Missouri, from Illinois, 
and now even from far-off New England — ^where at 
last they had learned the ^^easy way West" and had 
begun to travel, as their friends to the southward had 
been doing for so many years. Thus, then, began 
the great Oregon trail, this road that might, with 
justice, have been called an open highway when Fre- 
mont "explored" the Rockies, albeit a highway al- 
most unsettled, as it is to-day over much of its length, 
though peopled thick with mighty memories. The 
Mormons, the Missourians, the men bound for the 
placers of Montana, the valleys of California, or the 
w^arm slopes of the Oregon ranges — all these helped 
wear deep into the earth the old roadway, once 
clear-cnt and unmistakable for more than two thou- 



294 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

sand miles west of that Missouri Eiver which was the 
first route out into the ulterior Weat. 

It may profit us to fix in sequence a few simple 
facts in the study of the development of this great 
trail. At the start, of course, we come to our French- 
man De la Verendrye, who may perhaps have been 
the first to tread a portion of the later Oregon trail ; 
since we know he forsook the Missouri and started 
overland, possibly up the Platte, crossing some of the 
country which the Astorians later saw. We hear 
also of the trapper Ezekiel Williams* in 1807, and 
some of the advance guards of the Missouri Fur 
Company, who were cutting loose from the Missouri 
Eiver, and who were naturally looking for the easiest 
land routes. Then came Wilson Price Hunt, with 
his overland Astorians, seeking a way from the mid- 
Missouri Eiver to the Columbia Eiver. 

These established the course of the Oregon trail 
west of the Eockies, but did not trace it so distinctly 
on the east of that range. Later Eobert Stuart and 
the returning Astorians were to mark out, east of the 
Divide, the route of the Oregon trail for much of 
its length. Then came Ashley, who went up the 
Platte and across the South Pass; and after Ashley 
came scores of other flap-hatted trappers and traders, 



♦Said to have been the first white man to cross the borders of 
■what is now Wyoming. 



THE OREGON TRAIL 295 

all of whom rode, we may be sure, along the easiest 
ways; which meant the Sweetwater and the South 
Pass after the Platte was left behind. These fol- 
lowed the route of the Oregon trail for the compell- 
ing reason of topography. Now came Bonneville and 
his wagons to deepen the trail, in 1832; and two 
years later than that, in 1834, Robert Campbell and 
William Sublette built old Fort Laramie, on Lara- 
mie Creek, a branch of the Platte.* This establish- 
ment went far toward developing the Oregon trail 
into a regular route. It became a well known trad- 
ing center, so that all the trappers and many Indians 
rounded up there; and in the days of the emigrants, 
soon to come, thousands of weary travelers aided in 
marking deeply the now unmistakable and open road- 
way that lay across the Rocldes. 

So practicable was this post of Fort Laramie, and 
so practicable also the route on which it was located, 
that in 1849 the United States government bought the 
old post, and used it as a military establishment, so 
adding to its long and exciting histor}'. Eight years 
after the building of Fort Laramie, Fort Bridger was 
built by Jim Bridger, on a branch of the Green River, 
over the Divide, farther out to the west, along what 
had now come to be a universally accepted highway. 



♦Again our useful date of 1834, 



296 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

Jim Bridger, possibly the first discoverer of Great 
Salt Lake, was, by the year 1842, ready to admit 
that the old days were over and done with. No more 
trapping for Jim Bridger. The West was gone. 
He must thenceforth feed Mormons, or guide gov- 
ernment officers in their "explorations." Bridger 
gave up the West as a squeezed orange at just the 
time Fremont was starting out to make his name as 
the "Pathfinder" of the Eockies. Fremont, and all 
the other explorers of so late a period, went west as 
far as the head waters of the Green Kiver over the 
Oregon trail, — a road a man could have followed in 
the dark. 

The Mormons took over Fort Bridger in 1853, not 
liking so stable a Gentile institution thus near to 
their realm ; but the Mormons forgot that they could 
not wipe out the trail that led to Bridger's old log 
fortress. The trail brought on an ever-growing 
stream of travel. In time Fort Bridger, too, became 
an Army post, and remained such from 1857 till 
1890. Since the latter date it has been abandoned. 
We go to Europe to seek for interesting ruins, for- 
getting Laramie and Bridger and Benton, all spots 
with significant and thrilling histories. 

As to the great trail of the Northwest, considered 
as a transcontinental trail properly so called, its 



. THE OREGON" TRAIL 297 

second stage might be said to begin in 1834,* when 
it was first used as a route straight through to Oregon. 
After that date the parties of emigrants steadily 
grew in numbers, among them not only men from 
Missouri, but farther to the east. 

In 1836 there occurred a great and wonderful 
thing. Two women moved out into the West along 
the Oregon trail. We keep record of the times when 
wagons first went up the Platte, and we shall 
do well also to note this date of 1836, when 
women of the white race first went over the na- 
tional road of the West. These two were 
the wives of Whitman and Spalding, mission- 
aries bound for Oregon. Father de Smet, great 
man and good, a missionary also, followed in 18-40; 
then more missionaries from New England — always 
prolific of missionaries ; and two years later Fremont, 
as far at least as the South Pass. Then came the 
Mormons in 1847, bound for their kingdom of Des- 
eret, and the Oregon Battalion in the same year; 
these followed soon thereafter by a continuous 
stream made up of thousands of trappers and ex- 

*Pray you yet again, remember this great American date of 
1834, and you stiall be quit of all others, all those telling of wars 
and politics. That was the year when the beaver trapping ceased 
to be profitable, when the trappers came in, when the wild West 
began to become the civilized West. This date, remembered 
philosophically, will prove of the utmost service in retaining a 
connected idea of the settlement of the West. It has bearings 
both upon the past and upon the future. It is a milestone 
marking the parting of the ways. 



298 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

plorers and visitors and gold seekers, who began to 
crowd West after '49 and the discovery of gold. 
Those were busy times in the West, we may be 
sure. The Oregon trail grew deep and wide. No 
traveler on the north and south line could cross it 
without being aware of that fact. It was the plain, 
main-traveled road. 

The first agricultural invasion along the old trail 
might be said to be that of the Mormons, who 
sent delegations from their settlements to occupy 
the Green Eiver valley, and who used the trail for a 
short way. General Albert Sidney Johnson used it 
for many more miles, when he went out to take care 
of some of these Mormons, now grown obstreperous. 

Even so late as this we are many years in advance 
of the railways ; which indeed do not even to-day oc- 
cupy the old Oregon trail throughout its entire length, 
though using much of it on both sides of that easy 
South Pass country, once so useful to the trappers 
and wagon travelers, but not so essential to railway 
lengineers looking for more direct lines across the 
wastes. Perhaps we shall some day see a line of rails 
follow throughout the two thousand miles of this an- 
cient trail. Even so, our American tourists would 
still go to Europe in search of ruins and history and 
memories ! We know and care all too little now for 
this old trail, whose earliest travelers were called by 



THE OREGON TRAIL 299 

the California Indians the "Whoa-haws" — that be- 
ing the word most used by the aforesaid emigrants, 
who had pushed their ox-teams across half a conti- 
nent. Significant term, this "Whoa-haw" title, 
though we have now forgotten it. 

The emigrants of to-day do not go by the 
"Whoa-haw" route. On February twelfth of the year 
1902, between fifteen hundred and eighteen hun- 
dred land hunters left the city of Chicago for 
the country of the Northwest. Two-thirds of these 
came from the crowded East, the remaining third, 
for the most part, from the crowded West of 
Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, now grown very 
old. 

A common carrier, responsible as such for the 
life and goods of these emigrants, agreed to 
take them from Chicago to the city of Portland, on 
the extreme western end of that Oregon trail, for the 
price per head of thirty dollars. The old ^^Whoa- 
haw" route once demanded a year of time and a 
heart of steel, as part of the essential capital of the 
traveler, and demanded also that he take his own 
chances and foot his own losses, which, in the nature 
of things, might be considerable. 

It was expected by one railroad in the year 1902 
that it would, within the term of twelve months, carry 
out fifty thousand persons to settle in the Northwest 



300 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

coast country. There you have the old way and the 
new. There you have a part of the history of a 
country two thousand miles west of the Mississippi 
valley, which even Thomas Jefferson accepted as the 
very farthest edge of the region that could ever be 
called America! This is the story of a land that 
even Thomas Benton, a big man, and always a friend 
of the West, really in his own conscience thought 
could never, by any possibility, extend its national 
and civilized limits west of the Rockies ! This is the 
record of a region which, in the beginnings, of the 
Oregon trail, our ablest men of letters and of state- 
craft thought could never be aught but the home of 
wandering tribes of savages! Truly the great men 
of to-day might profitably learn humility from a 
study of the things which the American people have 
done in spite of leaders. x\h ! Daniel Webster, and 
many other Daniels of the little East, could you 
come to life to-day, what would be your oratory ? 

Francis Parkman, sometimes querulous, often su- 
percilious, but ever beautiful and splendidly accurate 
historian of the beginnings of the American West, 
visited the Oregon trail in 1846, twelve years after 
Kit Carson had practically ceased to trap beaver, 
and four years after the first Fremont expedition.* 

*One of Parkman's men, the hunter Raymond, perished in the 
ill-fated Fremont third expedition, among the snows of the lofty 
mountains far below the South Pass. 



THE OREGON TRAIL 301 

He says : "Emigrants from every part of the country 
were preparing for the journey to Oregon and Cal- 
ifornia ;" and adds, "An unusual number of traders 
were outfitting for the Northwest;" as well as many 
Mormons. This was before the discovery of gold in 
California. Independence, the outfitting point, was 
at the threshold of the later West, the beginning of 
the way to the Pacific* 

Parkman states in the preface to a later edition of 
his work (1872) : '^e knew that a few fanatical 
outcasts were groping their way across the plains to 
seek an asylum from Gentile persecution, but we did 
not dream that the polygamous hordes of Mormon 
would rear a swarming Jerusalem in the bosom of 
solitude itself. We knew that, more and more, year 
after year, the trains of the emigrant wagons would 
creep in slow procession toward barbarous Oregon or 
wild California, but we did not dream how Commerce 
and Gold would breed nations along the Pacific, the 
disenchanting screech of locomotives break the spell 
of weird mysterious mountains. . . . The wild 
cavalcade that defiled with me down the gorges of 
the Black Hills, with its paint and war plumes, flut- 
tering trophies and savage embroidery, bows, ar- 
rows, lances and shields, will never be seen again/' 

In no way could Parkman have been more just or 



*V. also Chapter II, Vol. Ill; "The Santa Fe Trail. 



302 THE Wx\Y TO THE WEST 

thoughtful than in one of his chance statements. 
''All things are relative/' said he. "The West is 
either very old or very new, according as we look at 
it." From the one point of view he might feel a 
superiority of his own, for as he traveled over the 
country a few days' march west of Leavenworth he 
saw many antlers of elk and skulls of bujffalo, "re- 
minders of the animals once swarming over this now 
deserted region." This intervening country be- 
tween the Missouri Eiver and the plains proper he 
considers to serve the popular notion of the "prairie." 
"For this it is/' he writes, "from which tourists, 
painters, poets and novelists, who have seldom pen- 
etrated farther, derived their conception of the whole 
region." There was fell stroke of unwitting justice ! 
Even to-day there are artists and novelists that deal 
with the West, but have "seldom penetrated farther" 
than the edge of the real W^est. 

Parkman himself saw the old trail fairly well dot- 
ted with the outfits of the west-bound emigrants. 
He describes the difficulties then existing between 
the Mormons and their enemies, and the suspicions 
of the one party against the other. He saw one 
party of fifty wagons, with "hundreds of cattle," on 
his way up the Platte. Far out to the West, on that 
Horse Creek so frequently mentioned in the his- 
tory of the mountain trappers' rendezvous, he wit- 



THE OREGON TRAIL 30:5 

nessed a party of Indian women and cliildren bath- 
ing in the stream, while meantime "a long traia of 
emigrants with their heavy wagons was crossing the 
creek, and dragging on in slow procession by the en- 
campment of the people whom they and their de- 
scendants, in the space of a century, are to sweep 
from the face of the earth." This was toward the 
headwaters of the Platte, of course, not far from 
that Fort Laramie where he met the grandsons of 
Daniel Boone, still going West, even unto the third 
and fourth generation. ^^Great changes are at 
hand," says he, "great changes are at hand in all 
that region. With the stream of emigration to Ore- 
gon and California the buffalo will dwindle away. 
. . . In a few years the traveler will pass in 
tolerable security." This was the utmost prophecy 
of one of the most intelligent and philosophical 
travelers that ever went from the East into the West ! 
Yet one of the most vivid conceptions possible of 
the history of that day, as bearing on the strange 
impulse that seemed to drive these wanderers west 
and ever westward, may be gained from a passage 
of Parkman's "Oregon Trail." "It is worth notic- 
ing," says, he, "that on the Platte one may some- 
times see the shattered wrecks of ancient claw-footed 
tables, well waxed and rubbed, or massive bureaus 
of carved oak. These, some of them no doubt the 



304 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

relics of ancestral prosperity in colonial times, must 
have encoamtered strange vicissitudes. Brought, 
perhaps, originally from England ; then, with the de- 
clining fortunes of their owners, home across the 
•Alleghanies to the wilderness of Ohio or Kentucky; 
then to Illinois or Missouri ; and now at last fondly 
stowed away for the interminable journey to Ore- 
gon. But the stern privations of the way are little 
anticipated. The cherished relic is thrown out to 
scorch and crack on the hot prairie." Whait a 
world of suggestion there lies in this chance picture 
of the desert — what a world of American liistory it 
covers! Perhaps one day the American people will 
come to take interest in a past so curious and so 
striking as its own. 

There was a time when every Western man, still 
restless, still unsettled, still under the mysterious 
west-bound impulse, thought in terms of Oregon and 
California. No wall could have stopped these men. 
No political doctrine could have restrained them. 
As well try to regulate the sweep of the tides of 
ocean, equally mysterious, equally irresistible. This 
great road of the prairies and the mountains, more 
than two thousand miles long, and level, smooth and 
easy, even though it crossed a continental divide — this 
unengineered triumph of engineering — ^lay directly 
at hand as the natural pathway of the American peo- 



THE OREGON" TRAIL 305 

pie. It was the longest highway of the world, unless 
that may be the trail of the convicts of Siberia, to 
reach whose terminus in the fullness of time this 
great trail of the American freemen seems to have 
been devised. It was the route of a national move- 
ment — the emigration of a people "seeking to avail 
itself of opportunities that have come but rarely 
in the history of the world, and will never come 
again." 

As has been stated, the overland trail to Oregon 
began, aa did the Santa Fe trail, at the town of In- 
dependence, on the Missouri River. The two trails 
were the same for forty-one miles, when, as the able 
historian of the fur trade remarks, a simple sign 
board was seen which carried the words, "Road to 
Oregon."* The methods of these old men were very 
direct and simple. There was small flourish about 
this little board, whose mission was to point the way 
across these miles of wild and uninhabited country ! 
There were branch trails that came into the road 
from Leavenworth and St. Joseph, striking it above 
the point of departure from the Santa Fe trail; but 
the Oregon trail proper swung off from this fork, 
running steadily to the northwest, part of the time 
along the Little Blue River, until at length it struck 



►Chittenden. 



306 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

the valley of the Platte, which was so essential to 
its welfare. The distance from Independence to the 
Platte was three hundred and sixteen miles, the trail 
reaching the Platte "about twenty miles below the 
head of Grand Island/^ The course thence lay up the 
Platte valley to the two fords, about at the Forks of 
the Platte, four hundred and thirty-three or four 
hundred and ninety-three miles. 

Here at the Forks was a point of departure in the 
old days. If one chose to follow the South Fork of 
the Platte, he might bring up in the Bayou Salade, 
within reach of the Spanish settlements and the head 
of the Arkansas, as we may see in reading of La 
Lande and of Purcell and of Ashley, and of the later 
traders; or he might take the other arm and come 
out on the edge of the continental Divide much 
higher up to the north. 

The Oregon trail followed the South Fork for a 
time, then swung over to the North Fork, at 
Ash Creek, five hundred and thirteen miles from 
Independence. It was six hundred and sixty- 
seven miles to Fort Laramie, which was the 
last post on the eastern side of the Rockies. 
Thence the trail struggled on up the Platte, keeping 
close as it might to the stream, till it reached the 
Ford of the Platte, well up toward the mountains, 
and seven hundred and ninety-four miles out from 



THE OREGON TRAIL Dor 

Independence — ^nearly the same distance from tliat 
point as was the city of Santa Fe on the lower trail. 

Yet a little farther on and the trail forsook the 
Platte and swung across, eight hundred and seven 
miles out from the Missouri, to the valley of tlie 
Sweetwater, now an essential feature of the highway. 
The famous Independence Rock, eight hundred and 
thirty-eight miles from Independence, was one of 
the most noteworthy features along the trail. It 
marked the entrance into the Sweetwater dis- 
trict, and was a sort of register of the wilderness, 
holding the rudely carved names of many of the 
greatest Western venturers, as well as many of no 
consequence. The Sweetwater takes us below the 
foot of the Bighorns, through the Devil's Gate, and 
leads us gently up to that remarkable crossing of the 
Rockies known as the South Pass, a spot of great 
associations. This is nine hundred and forty-seven 
miles from the Missouri River. Here all the west- 
bound voyagers felt that their journey to the Pacific 
was well-nigh completed, though as a matter of fact 
it was not yet half done. This Western geography, 
of which most of us know so little, was a tremendous 
thing in the times before the railways came. 

Starting now down the Pacific side of the Great 
Divide, the traveler passed over a hundred and 
twenty-five miles of somewhat forbidding country, 



308 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

crossing the Green Eiver before he came to Fort 
Bridger^ the first resting point west of the Bockies, 
ten hundred and seventy miles from the Missouri. 
This was a delightful spot in every way, and the 
station was always welcomed by the travelers. Tho 
Bear River was eleven hundred and thirty-six miles 
from Independence;, and to the Soda Springs, on the 
big bend of the Bear, was twelve hundred and six 
miles. Thence one crossed over the height of land 
between the Bear .and the Port Neuf rivers, the 
latter being Columbia water; and, at a distance of 
twelve hundred and eighty-eight miles from Inde- 
pendence, reached the very important point of Fort 
Hall, the post established and abandoned by the East- 
erner, Nathaniel Wyeth. This was the first point 
at which the trail struck the Snake Eiver, that great 
lower arm of the Columbia, which came dropping 
down from its source opposite the headwaters of the 
Missouri, as though especially to point out the way 
to travelers, just as the South Fork of the Platte led 
to the Spanish Southwest. There lay our pathways, 
waiting ready for us! 

At the Raft Eiver was another point of great in- 
terest; for here turned aside the arm of the trans^ 
continental trail that led to California. This fork 
of the road was thirteen hundred and thirty-four 



THE OEEGON TEAIL 309 

miles from the Missouri.* Working as best it might 
from the Eaft Eiver, down the Great Snake valley, 
touching and crossing and paralleling several differ- 
ent streams, tlie trail ran until it reached the Grande 
Eonde valley, at the eastern edge of the difficult 
Blue Mountains, and seventeen hundred and thirty- 
six miles from the starting point. The railway to-day 
crosses the Blues where the old trail did. Then the 
route struck the Umatilla, and shortly thereafter the 
mighty Columbia, the "Oregon" of the poet, and a 
stream concerning which we were not always so 
placid as we are to-day. It was nineteen hundred 
and thirty-four miles to the Dalles, nineteen hundred 
and seventy-seven miles to the Cascades, two thou- 
sand and twenty miles to Fort Vancouver, and 
twenty-one hundred and thirty-four miles to the 
mouth of the Columbia; though the trail proper 
terminated at Fort Vancouver — the same post, as 
we shall see, for which the hero Jedediah Smith 
headed when he was in such dire distress, in the 
mountains of southwest Oregon.f 

This was the way to the Pacific, the trail across 
the Eockies, the appointed path of the heroes that 



*The later California trail passed farther to the south, along 
the upper end of the Great Salt Lake, leaving- the main trail 
at the upper bend of the Bear, to the east of Fort Hall. 

tV. Chapter IV, Vol. Ill; "Early Explorers of the Trans-Mis- 
souri," 



310 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

ventured forth into the unknown lands, as well as of 
the men that followed them safely in later days. It 
was but a continuation of the way to the Missouri, 
of the way across the Alleghanies , a part of the path 
of the strange appointed pilgrimage of the white race 
in America. 



CHAPTER IV 

EARLY EXPLORERS OF THE TRANS-MISSOURI 

It is customary to read and to teach history in the 
time-honored fashion which begins at the beginning 
and comes on down until to-day, not skipping the 
battles and not forgetting the tables of dynasties, 
royal or political. Without wishing to be eccentric or 
iconoclastic, none the less one may venture to sug- 
gest that there may be a certain virtue in beginning 
with events well within our reach and comprehension, 
and then going backward, which is to say going 
forward, in our knowledge of our field. This is es- 
pecially useful as a method in studying the history 
of the West of the trans-Missouri. 

We have seen that the first Fremont expedition 

had no feature of discovery attached to it beyond the 

climbing to the top of a mountain that had been 

known by many for years, but which no one else had 

wanted to climb, because of the general knowledge of 

the fact that buffalo and beaver did not reside on 

the mountain tops. We know that Fremont, when 

he stood at the South Pass, was in the middle of a 

country that had been well known when he was a 
311 



312 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

child. We liave seen that his journey across the 
plains was over a country perfectly understood and 
fully charted. There were hostile Indians on the 
plains in those days, to be sure, yet Indians are far 
simpler as a problem if you yourself know the exact 
distances between grass and watering places and cover 
and good game country. All this information Fre- 
mont received ready prej)ared. Fremont commanded ; 
Kit Carson led. 

For Kit Carson we may feel a certain reverence 
as a man of the real West; but shall we believe that 
even Kit Carson divided with Fremont the experi- 
ence of setting foot in a new and virgin world ? Not 
so. Kit Carson himself, great man as he was, never 
claimed to be a great explorer. He is properly to be 
called a great traveler, not a great discoverer. He 
perhaps found some beaver streams at first hand, but 
he himself would have been the first to admit that he 
got all the great features of the Eockies at second 
hand. Before him there were discoverers and 
pseudo-discoverers, actual as well as false prophets 
of adventure. 

If we go by dates alone we shall find ourselves 
presently concerned with Captain Bonneville, some- 
time famous as an '^explorer" of the Eocky Moun- 
tains. Him we may class as one of the pseudo- 
discoverers. He was an army officer, who discovered 



THE TRANS-MISSOURI 313 

nothing, but who obtained a great reputation 
through the chronicling of his deeds in the Rocky 
Mountains; so great that, having grossly exceeded 
his leave of absence, he was eventually reinstated in 
the Army after he had lost his commission, the 
president of the United States remarking that he 
"could not fail so to reward one who had con- 
tributed so much to the welfare of his country" ! 
Bonneville was a lucky man. He lost but few 
mules and but few men. He brought back a map 
on which was founded the greater part of his 
reputation, maps and scientific nomenclature hav- 
ing been ever, in the estimation of some, held to sur- 
pass any original discoveries in geography and 
natural history. 

Bonneville's map had a certain value at the time, 
yet it held little actual first hand information, be- 
cause it was built upon knowledge derived from 
Gallatin, from that big man. General Ashley, 
the fur trader, and from the latter's gallant 
associate, Jedcdiah Smith.* As to Bonneville him- 
self, he was, unless we shall except Fremont, the 
first great example of the class later to be known 



♦AH of these maps, by the way, must have been at the dis- 
posal of Fremont; yet we do not learn that he believed the 
east and west course of the Buena Ventura was an impossibility, 
although Jededlah Smith had long since shown the inaccuracy of 
this old idea, which later was to cost Fremont so much Buffering 
In the mountains of upper California. 



314 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

as ^^tenderfoot." A certain glory attaches to him, 
because he was the first man to take a wagon train 
through the South Pass, which he did ten years 
before Fremont "discovered" that country. 

Bonneville went West in 1832, two years before Kit 
Carson stopped trapping beaver for the reason that it 
no longer paid him. The lucky captain traveled up 
the Platte valley to Fort Laramie, then broke across 
on the old mountain road of the West, up the Sweet- 
water, to the South Pass, thence getting upon the Pa- 
cific waters, the headwaters of the Green River; one 
of the two great arms of the Colorado, and an im- 
portant stream in fur trading days. Obviously, 
Bonneville wanted to grow rich quickly in the 
fur trade, being more intent on that than on 
exploration for geographical purposes. He discov- 
ered that there was already a West beyond him, 
even then a distinct region, with ways of its own 
and men of its own. He continued to move 
about in the mountains for a couple of years more, 
the South Pass serving as the center of his opera- 
tions; but really it is of little concern what Bonne- 
ville did during the remainder of his long stay in 
the West. We may, none the less, after a fashion, 
call Bonneville one of the predecessors of Carson, if 
we shall date Carson's earthly existence only from 
his connection with Fremont. How, then, did the 



THE TRAN-S-MISSOURI 315 

lucky captain indirectly serve as predecessor of quiet 
and valid Kit Carson? 

It was in tMs way. Bonneville had with him an 
old Santa Fe trail man named J. R. Walker; 
for we must remember that in 1832 the Santa 
Fe trail had really seen its best days. Walker 
wanted to go to California^ and Bonneville was 
eager to have him do so, for the worthy captain 
was far more concerned about beaver than about 
geography; and there was, as we shall presently 
discover, a very good reason to foresee an abun- 
dance of beaver in California. Bonneville and his 
lieutenant, when these plans first matured, were 
still on the Green River, this being the year after 
they had first reached the Rockies. The fur trade 
was not prosperous; even thus early they found 
competition in the Rocky Mountainsu The country 
was not new enough. The West, as viewed from 
the headwaters of the Green River, lay still farther 
forward in the course of the setting sun. Walker 
must go to California and bring back from it its 
beaver peltry. 

Walker, therefore, on July twenty-seventh, 1833, 
left Bonneville on the Green River and started on the 
tremendous journey toward the Pacific Ocean. He 
took with him forty men, and perhaps later picked up 
a dozen wandering trappers or so, who desired to join 



316 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

the California venture. Here, then, was a discov- 
erer who started for California more than a decade 
before Fremont did; more than sixteen years be- 
fore any one suspected California to be a land 
of gold. The trapping of beaver, and not the dig- 
ging of gold, was the first cause of Calif omian 
exploration by the Americans of the upper West. 
The beaver was a fateful animal. 

Walker dropped down the Green River intoi the 
valley of the Great Salt Lake, which was at that 
time a perfectly well known country, though it had 
not been described in any official reports. Thence 
he headed westward across the Great Basin, whose 
terrors had so long held back even the hardy trappers 
of the mountain region. He gave the name Barren 
Eiver to the stream now called the Humboldt. He 
gave his own name to another stream. After some 
fashion he won across the great desert, and crossed 
also the Sierra range, accomplishing this latter feat 
about October twenty-fifth. He was, perhaps, the first 
man to see the Yosemite valley, though as to that we 
can not be certain. By the end of Xovember, 1833, 
he was within view of the Pacific Ocean. 

After all, then, it did not seem to be so hard to 
get across the country in those early times. Nor 
was it so difficult to return. Walker had fifty-two 
men and three hundred and sixty-five horses when 



THE TEAKS-MISSOUEI 317 

he started eastward in February, 1834. He had, of 
course, met that Spanish civilization which first 
explored the Colorado River and first settled the 
Pacific slope. "Walker now had guides, Indians of 
the land, who led him eastward across the Sierras, 
somewhat south of the place where he crossed going 
west. 

Once over the mountains, he headed north- 
ward along the eastern edge of the range, until he 
intercepted his own west-bound trail, which he fol- 
lowed back until he reached what is now known as 
the Humboldt Eiver. Thence he went north to the 
Snake River, and so on back to the rendezvous on 
the Bear River. At the rendezvous he made public 
what information he could add to the general store. 
Thus it was, perhaps, that Carson and his confreres 
learned more than they had known before of the 
beaver country beyond the Sierras. That rendez- 
vous of the old mountain men — ah! who will one 
day understand it and immortalize it? That was a 
great market, a great journal, a great college! 
There indeed maps were made! There indeed 
geography grew! That was where the West was 
really learned ah initio. 

This mountain market, this map-making college 
of a primeval West, was first established in 1824; 
hence we may say that Walker, in 1834, had no 



318 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

license to be called an old-timer in the West. In 
1834 tlie old West of the adventurers was done.* He 
was before Fremont, before Carson's leadership of 
Fremont; but there was some one else before him, 
a man who had crossed the continent and had seen 
the western sea even before Kit Carson made his 
first journey thither with the men of Taos and 
Bent's Fort neighborhood; even before Walker's 
successful expedition was conceived. 

Who was this earlier man, this first man to cross 
to the Pacific by the land trail? No less than one 
Smith, Jedediah Smith, a man of no rank nor title, 
and all too little station in American history. This 
was the man that first led the trappers from the Rock- 
ies west to California. This man, Jedediah Smith, 
is indeed a hero. 'Not a boaster but an adventurer; 
not a talker but a doer of deeds; the very man fit 
to be type of the Western man to come. Smith 
himself was the product of a generation of the 
American West, and though we search all the 
annals of that West, we shall find no more satis- 
fjdng record, no more eye-filling picture, nor any 
greater figure than his own. He is worthy of a 
place by the side of that other Smith, the John . 
Smith who explored Virginia, near the starting 
place of the American star of empire. What pity 
that Washington Irving did not find Jedediah Smith 

♦Again, remember this significant date of 1834. 



THE TRANS-MISSOUEI 319 

rather than the inconsequent Bonneville, and so 
immortalize the right man with his beautifying pen! 
There is a great hero story left untold 1 

Our Smith was a member of that firm of young 
men, Smith, Sublette and Jackson, who bought out 
the business of that first great fur trader, General 
Ashley. It goes without saying that Smith knew 
all the upper country of the Yellowstone, the Mis- 
souri, the South Pass region, the Sweetwater, the 
Green, the Bear, long before he first resolved to 
gratify his love of initial adventure and to head out 
across that unknown country of the far Southwest. 

We are getting close to the first of new-American 
things when we come to the story of his journey. 
There had been early Spaniards, there had been In- 
dians perhaps, who knew the way across, but there 
was none to pilot Smith. He started of his own re- 
solve and traveled under his own guidance. They had 
not told him, as they had told Kit Carson, of the ex- 
cellent beaver country of the Sacramento. The vast 
country beyond the Great Salt Lake had been too 
forbidding for even that later hardy soul to under- 
take as yet ; and the reaches of the Eockies above and 
below the eastern edge of that desert had contented 
all of Bridger's hardy companions. The more rea- 
son, therefore, thought Smith, that he and his little 
party of fifteen men should cross the desert; and 



320 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

he did so, quite as though it were a matter of 
course. 

Having no guide, he simply went west as well as 
he could, clinging to grass and water as he went. He 
left the rendezvous near Salt Lake in 1826, crossed 
the Sevier valley, struck the Virgin or Adams River, 
followed the Colorado for a time, and at length broke 
boldly away over the awful California desert, until, 
in such way as we can but imagine, he reached at 
length the Spanish settlements of San Diego. This 
was in the month of October. Smith crossed the 
Sierras near the point where runs to-day the Atchison, 
Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. He was somewhat in 
advance of the engineers. 

Although we do not learn that Smith had any 
guide or any advance information, it seems that the 
Spaniards did not appreciate the difficulties under 
which he had visited them. They bade him leave 
the country at once. Perhaps Smith was not quite 
candid with the Spaniards, for, though he promised 
compliance, instead of starting directly back to the 
eastward, he went north four hundred miles, put out 
his traps and wintered on the San Joaquin and 
Merced rivers. He found there a trapper's El Dorado. 

This information, of course, would be more val- 
uable when imparted to his friends eastward in the 
Rockies. Hence we observe Smith leaving his party, 



THE TEANS-MISSOURI 321 

and taking with him only two men^ seven horses and 
two mules, calmly starting back again to the 
Eockies, which by this time must have seemed to 
him an old and well settled country. In the in- 
credible time of twenty-eight days he was back again 
at the southwest corner of Salt Lake. We can not 
tell just how he made this journey. Perhaps he 
crossed the Sierras near the Sonora Pass, thence 
went east, far to the south of the Humboldt River, 
and south also of what is now called Walker Lake. 
We must remember that neither this river nor lake 
had any name when Smith was there. Jedediah 
Smith antedated all names, all maps, all geography! 
Yet all this was not so very long ago, if we reflect 
that it took three hundred years to find the source 
of the Mississippi River after its mouth had been 
discovered. It is not yet one hundred years back 
to Smith. 

Jedediah Smith was no man to waste time. He 
told his friends what he had found beyond the snowy 
range. By July thirteenth, 1827, he was ready with 
eighteen men of a new party to start back for Cali- 
fornia. Now he began to meet the first of his extraor- 
dinarily bad luck, the first of a series of misfor- 
tunes that must have stopped any man but himself. 
The Spaniards seem to have had some notion of 
Smithes intentions, and they set Indians to watch 



322 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

the trails down, tlie Virgin and the Colorado. These 
met Smith near the Colorado River and killed 
ten of his men. Almost destitute. Smith reached 
the Spanish settlements of San Gabriel and San 
Biego only to meet with further misfortune. His 
native guides — for now he had learned how to secure 
Indian guides — were imprisoned, and he himself was 
thrown into jail at San Jose. He was released on 
condition that he leave the country; which he 
proceeded to do after a fashion peculiarly his 
own. He traveled three hundred miles to the north 
and wintered on a stream now called, from that fact, 
the American Fork. 

All this time he was finding good beaver country, 
and the packs of the little party grew heavier and 
heavier. Why he did not now cross the Sierras and 
get back home again we do not know ; but instead of 
going east, he struck northwest, until he nearly 
reached the Pacific Ocean. Thence he turned inland, 
and headed due north, — which meant Oregon. It is 
easy to-day, but Smith had no map, no trail, no trans- 
portation save that of the horse and mule train. All 
the time he and his party continued to pick up a 
greater store of beaver. 

At last, on July twenty-fourth, 1828, somewhere 
near the Umpqua River, they established a temporary 
camp. On that day Smith left camp for a time, and 



THE TRANS-MISSOURI 323 

as lie returned he met Indians, who fired upon him. 
He got back to the bivouac, only to find it the scene 
of one of those horrible Indian butcheries with which 
the trapper of that day was all too familiar. Ten 
men out of his new party had been killed on the 
Colorado. Here, about the camp in Oregon, lay 
fifteen more of his men, dead, scalped and mutilated. 
The horses were gone. Three of his companions had 
escaped, but these had fled in a panic, each on his 
own account. The discoverer. Smith, was there alone 
in the mountains, without map, without guide, with- 
out counsel. There was a situation, simple, primeval, 
Titanic! There indeed was the West! 

Smith was a religious man, a Christian. His was an 
inner and unfailing courage not surpassed by that 
of any known Western man. Perhaps he sought 
Divine counsel in this his extremity; at least he 
lost neither courage nor calmness. He knew, of 
course, that there was a Columbia River somewhere; 
for this was in 1828, and by that time the Columbia 
was an old story. He knew that this great river was 
north of him, and knew that there were settlements 
near its mouth, as we shall presently understand. 
He further knew that the North Star pointed out the 
north. Alone, with his rifle as reliance, he made 
that tremendous journey northward which Fremont, 
with his full party, made in an opposite direction, 



e324 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

on a parallel line farther to the eastward, only 
after untold hardship, though Fremont had 
men and animals, and supplies. Sustained by Provi- 
dence, as he believed, Smith at length accomplished 
his journey and reached the Hudson Bay post at 
Eort Vancouver. 

We may now see the strange commercial condi- 
tions of that time. We say that Jedediah Smith was 
the first to cross from the Hockies to the Pacific; 
but this_, of course, means only that he was the first 
to cross at mid-continent. There had been .others 
on the Columbia before Smith. The Hudson Bay 
factor. Doctor McLaughlin, a great and noble man, a 
gentleman of the wilderness, meets the wanderer as 
a friend, although he is in the employ of a rival 
company. He sends out a party tO' recover Smith's 
lost packs of beaver at the abandoned camp far to 
the southward. Almost incredible to say, these men 
do find the furs. 

McLaughlin gives Smith a draft on London for 
twenty thousand dollars, it is said, in payment for 
these furs! Strange contrast to the treatment 
Ashley and his men accorded the Hudson Bay 
trapper, Ogden, some years earlier, when the 
latter was in adversity in the Eockies ! Strange story 
indeed, this of the adventures of Jedediah Smith ! 
Survivor of thirty of his men, escaped from a Spanish 



THE TKANS-MISSOURI 325 

prison, robbed, nearly killed, after one of the most 
perilous journeys ever undertaken in the West, Smith 
emerges from this desperate trip across an unmapped 
country with twenty thousand dollars, and none of 
his men left to share it! 

In March, 1829, Smith started east from Fort 
Vancouver to find his partners, Sublette and Jack- 
son. When he reached the Flathead country he was 
much at home, for he had been there before. Thence 
he headed to the Snake River, where he met Jackson, 
"who,'' says our historian, naively, "was looking for 
him !" The ways of that time were, after all, of a 
certain sufficiency. Sublette he finds on the Henry 
Fork on August fifth, also much as a matter Of course. 
Strange lands, strange calling, strange restoration 
after unusual and wild experiences — so strange that 
we find nothing in the life of Crockett to parallel it 
in valor and initiative, nothing in Boone's to surpass 
it, nothing in Carson's to equal it, and nothing in the 
story of any adventurer's life to cast it in the shade. 

This was indeed authentic traveling, authentic dis- 
covering, and upon this was based the first map of a 
vast region in what was really the West. After all 
this was done, the knowledge spread rapidly, we 
may suppose. This was how Carson's friends learned 
of the Sacramento. This is how the discoveries of 
J'remont were forerun; for the latter, under Car- 



326 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

son's guidance, simply circumnavigated tKe vast 
region vrhich Smith both circumnavigated and 
crossed direct. Eeaders would not receive the plain 
story of Jedediah Smith as fit for fiction. It would 
be too impossible. 

We might pause to tell the end of so great a man 
as this. At last Smith and his historic partners 
found the fur trade too much divided to be longer 
profitable. In 1830 the three went to St. Louis to 
take a venture in the Santa Fe trade, this being 
two years before Captain Bonneville sallied out into 
the West. Contemptuous of the dangers of the prai- 
ries, after facing so long those of the mountains, 
these three hardy Westerners started across the 
plains with a small outfit of their own. Far out on 
the Arkansas they were beset by the Comanches. 
Fighting like a man and destroying a certain num- 
ber of his enemies before he himself fell, Jedediah 
Smith was killed. He met thus the logical though 
long deferred end of a life that had always been 
careless of danger. 

Gregg, in his '^Scenes and Incidents in the West- 
em Prairies" (the book later known as ^The 
Commerce of the Prairies'^), mentions the death 
of Smith, but of his life and character he seemed 
to have had but little knowledge. The his- 
torian of the Santa Fe trade was just starting West 



THE TRANS-MISSOURI 337 

when Smith closed his own career. Smith was dead 
before Bonneville saw the Rockies. We see that he 
antedated Walker and Carson and Fremont. The 
fatal prairie expedition of these great fur traders. 
Smith, Sublette and Jackson, went on westward up 
the Arkansas with the mountain trader, Fitzpatrick, 
who was bound for a rendezvous far to the north of 
Bent's Fort — the same Fitzpatrick whom Carson met 
above Bent's Fort in one of his own expeditions. 
N'ow we may begin to see the trails of our trappers 
and adventurers interlacing and crossing, and can 
understand who were the real adventurers, who the 
actual explorers. 

Great and satisfying a figure as Jedediah Smith 
makes, we may not pause with him too long, and 
may not believe him to have been at the very first of 
things. He was the first to cross over the Rockies 
and the Sierras in mid-America, yet he was not 
the first white man to stand on the soil of the 
dry Southwest. Examine the older maps and you 
shall see along the Virgin and the Colorado the line 
of the old Spanish trail from California to the mis- 
sion settlements of Few Mexico. 

It can not accurately be told who first made this 
trail, crossing the valley of tlie Colorado, whose flood 
drains two hundred and twenty-five thousand square 
miles of mountain and desert. In 1781 Father Garces 



328 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

built a mission on the Colorado near the month of the 
Gila. But he was not the first. Cardenas, a fellow- 
soldier with Coronado, is perhaps the first man to 
write of the Grand Canon of the Colorado ; but he was 
not the first to discover it nor the first to see that 
stream. Alarcon, a member of the party of the sea 
captain Uloa, was the first man to reach the Colorado. 
This was in the year 1540, the ship of Uloa reaching 
the Gulf of California in 1539. 

This was a small matter of three hundred years be- 
fore Fremont saw the South Pass, some three hundred 
years before Jedediah Smith crossed the desert to Cal- 
ifornia, and something like three hundred years be- 
fore the upper sources of the Mississippi River were 
known ! So thus we may leave this portion of the 
West to await the Gadsden Purchase, and the addition 
of the land won by Houston and Crockett and Fannin 
and Travis and other hero friends to the south and 
east of the purchased territory. 

As for the transportation employed during these 
early times, we may repeat a few facts by way of 
insistence. The Santa Fe trade began with pack 
trains, but saw wagons used in 1822. In 1826 Gen- 
eral Ashley took his little wheeled cannon through 
the South Pass to his fort on Utah Lake. In 1830 
Smith, Sublette and Jackson made the journey from 
the Missouri Eiver with mule teams and wagons 



ffHE TEANS-MISSOUEI 329 

as Mt as the Wind Eiver; and they said they could 
have gone on over the South Pass with their wagons 
had they wished to do so. Poor Bonneville! His 
distinction of taking the first wagon through the 
South Pass is as empty as that of Fremont in 
climbing his mountain peak near that same South 
Pass. Both accomplishments had been left undone 
by earlier visitors simply because they did not want 
to do these things. We see that, before Carson or 
Walker or Smith, the courses and headwaters of the 
Yellowstone and the Missouri and the Columbia 
rivers were all very well known. We have noted that 
Smith knew of the Columbia settlements. This he 
knew because he had learned it at the rendezvous. 
How came these settlements on the Columbia? We 
shall have to go to New York to find the answer to 
that question. 

Everybody knows the story of Astoria and the 
beginning of the American Fur Company. John 
Jacob Astor of New York secured a New York 
charter for that company April sixth, 1808, very soon 
after hearing the results of the Lewis and Clark 
expedition. He had a great purpose in his mind. 
He had fought out and bought out competitors in 
the fur trade all along the Great Lakes; had met 
and gaged the resources of the Northwest Com- 
pany, then beginning to rival the ancient Hudson 



330 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

Bay Compan}^ in the wild race across the continent. 

It was Astor's idea to beat the Northwest Fur Com- 
pany to the mouth of the Columbia, and hence 
command what was supposed to be the rich fur 
trade of that new and unknown region. He intended 
to send ships laden with trading supplies to the 
mouth of the Columbia Eiver, there to take on the 
cargoes of furs caught by his own men or secured 
in trade with the Indians. These ships, laden with 
furs, were to go thence across the Pacific to China, 
and were to return from China to New York, laden 
with the products of the Orient, which our old-time 
historian, Henry Howe, thought must some time come 
across the American continent by rail. Here, then, 
was a commercial undertaking of no small dimen- 
sions. 

Mr. Astor attached two strings to his bow. He 
fitted out one expedition by sea, and one by land, the 
objective point of each being the mouth of the 
Columbia Elver. He relied largely upon men he had 
known in the fur trade of the Great Lakes for the 
leadership of his land party, but he made the great 
mistake of placing three men in practically equal 
command. Unfortunately, he made another mistake 
in establishing the leadership of his sea expedition. 
There was but one leader there, the captain of the 
ship Tonquin, Thome by name, a man by no means 



THE TEANS-MISSOURI 331 

fitted to command any company of adventurers. The 
Tonquin left New York September sixth, 1810. It 
reached the mouth of the Columbia Eiver March 
twenty-second, 1811. A party was soon thereafter 
detached for the erection of the proposed post to be 
known as Astoria. The Tonquin then proceeded 
northward up the coast. Its commander, domineer- 
ing, overbearing, not fitted to trade with the Indians, 
succeeded in exciting the wrath of the Coast Indians. 
The latter attacked his ship and practically destroyed 
his crew, one of whom, an unknown fighting man, 
whose ifiame is lost by reason of events, blew up the 
ship, killing many savages and destroying all vestige 
of the encounter. This was about June thirteenth, 
1811. 

As to the land party under its three leaders, we 
may say that the winter was spent near St. Joseph, 
Missouri, but on April twenty-first, 1811, about a 
month after the ship Tonquin had reached the mouth 
of the Columbia, this land party started out on its 
long and arduous western journey. By June twelfth 
they had traveled thirteen hundred and twenty-five 
miles up the Missouri River, being then in the neigh- 
borhood of the Arickaree villages. There they bought 
horses and started boldly westward, leaving the 
waterway of the Missouri^ the first of the great com- 



332 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

panies of transcontinental travelers to proceed along 
the cord of the great bow of the Missouri. 

There were sixty-four of these Astorians, and they 
had with them eighty-two horses. They must have 
passed to the north of the Black Hills. They crossed 
the Big Horns and on September twenty-ninth were 
on the Wind Eiver^ a stream later to be so well known 
by trappers and traders. They ascended the Wind 
Eiver about eighty miles^ seeking for a place to cross 
the Eocky Mountains. They had Crow Indians as 
guides through the Big Horns, and west of the Big 
Horns the Shoshones had guided them. These Indians 
detected signs of other Indians on ahead, and hence 
did not present to these travelers the natural and 
easy way, through the South Pass, — an ascent so 
gentle that one can scarcely tell when he has reached 
the actual summit. The Astorians crossed the 
mountains probably at what is now known as the 
Union Pass, a little to the north of the South Pass. 

On September twenty-fourth they started from the 
Green Eiver to the Snake Eiver, and on October 
eighth, 1811, reached Fort Henry, which, at the 
time the Astorians reached it, was an abandoned post. 
It seems that even these early travelers found a West 
in which there had been some one before them! 
Thence, scattered and disorganized, on foot and by 
boat, this party undertook to go down the Snake 



THE TRANS-MISSOUEI 33^ 

River to the Columbia. By January first, 1812, they 
reached the valley known as the Grande Ronde. By 
January eighth some of them were on the Umatilla 
River, and some of them reached the Columbia by 
January twenty-first. Here they met Indians, who 
told them of the destruction of the Tonquin and the 
loss of a great number of their associates — an inci- 
dent that shows well enough the strange fashion in 
which news travels in the wilderness. 

Some parties under Mackenzie, McLellan and 
Reed separated, came down the Clearwater to the 
Lewis or Snake River, and thence voyaged on down- 
stream as best they could. Some of these reached 
Astoria January eighteenth, 1812, ahead of others of 
their scattered companions, who seem to have wan- 
dered aimlessly about the upper tributaries of the Co- 
lumbia. The party under Hunt reached Astoria 
February fifteenth, 1812. Crooks and Day, others of 
the expedition, did not come in until May eleventh. 
A party of thirteen trappers, who had been left be- 
hind to pursue their calling, did not reach the post 
until January fifteenth, 1813. The trip, measuring 
by the time of the first arrivals at the mouth of the 
Columbia, had required three hundred and forty days. 
Thirty-five hundred miles of country had been cov- 
ered. The Northwestern Company had been beaten 
in the race to the mouth of the Columbia by just 



034 TllK WAY TO THE WEST 

three months. It was beaten by a gait of about ten 
miles a day! We build railroads almost as rapidly 
as that to-day. 

Discovering that, ten years before Jedediah Smith 
made his journey northward across Oregon to Fort 
Vancouver, there were well established lines of travel 
and well established settlements on the Columbia and 
its tributaries, we may think that by this time we 
are close to the first of things in Western history. 
Of course we know that ahead of the Astoria party 
was the Lewis and Clark expedition. Before Lewis 
and Clark came the Louisiana Purchase, which 
oifered us this territory for exploration; and the 
Lewis and Clark expedition will serve as the start- 
ing point of our scheme of the history of the trans- 
Missouri. 

We may, perhaps, reinforce these salient points in 
memory if we go back once more well upon this side 
of our former starting point, and work to it again 
upon slightly different lines. For instance, we may 
ask, who built Fort Henry, the fort that the Asto- 
rians found abandoned, west of the Rocky Mountains? 
The answer is. Major Andrew Henry, some time part- 
ner of that energetic early merchant. General Ashley. 
Henry was at the Three Forks of the Missouri in 
1810. He crossed southward through the mountains 
and built Fort Henry in the fall of that year. This 



THE TRANS-MTSSOURT 335 

was the first post built west of the Continental 
Divide. It was erected on what is now known as the 
Henry Fork of the Snake River. 

But was Major Henry himself the first man to 
penetrate into the Rockies? He was not. Who, 
then, was ahead of Henry? The answer is, Manuel 
Liza, that strange character of Spanish, French and 
American blood, who was perhaps the first of th(^ 
Western merchants to catch the full significance of 
the Lewis and Clark expedition. We have heard of 
one William Morrison, of Kaskaskia, Illinois, who 
sent a representative to far-off Santa Fe. This same 
William Morrison was the partner of our strange 
genius, Manuel Liza, in the first fur trading venture 
up the Missouri. They fitted out one keel-boat for 
the Northwest trade in the spring of 1807. 

Did Liza and his hardy crew of keel boatmen find 
an untracked and uninhabited wilderness ? Not alto- 
gether such; for, as they were ascending the ancient 
waterway, they met coming down one John Colter, 
that hardy soul who had left the Lewis and Clark ex- 
pedition to return to the Yellowstone River for the 
purpose of doing a little beaver trapping on his own 
account. Colter, it may be remembered, is thought 
to have been the first discoverer of the region now 
included in the Yellowstone National Park. This 
country was discovered and forgotten, to be later 



336 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

officially "discovered" on the same basis that Fremont 
discovered other portions of the Rockies. Colter is 
the last link in this chain. He brings ns back again 
to Lewis and Clark, the first of the up-stream ad- 
venturers to penetrate the region of the trans-Mis- 
souri. 

We may all the better strengthen the backward- 
running chain by one or two more links ex- 
tending from comparatively recent dates, to those 
that we may consider as marking the beginning 
of things in the West. For instance, we have heard 
much of General Ashley, that enterprising and for- 
tunate early fur trader, whose success was the first to 
call the attention of the capital of the East to the 
enormous profits of the fur trade in the West when 
properly conducted. Ashley's first partner was Major 
Andrew Henry. 

The first rendezvous of the mountain men was that 
arranged in 1824 for Ashley and Henry's men. Ash- 
ley himself undertook to explore the Green River, 
a stream then thought to empty into the Gulf of 
Mexico, no less an authority than Baron Hum- 
boldt having made this particular error in West- 
ern geography. Shipwrecked, Ashley none the less 
escaped, and somewhere near the point where he met 
his disaster, he cut his name on a rock, together 
with the date, 1825. Major Powell, later an official 



THE TRANS-MISSOUEI 337 

discoverer, in his expedition down the Colorado River, 
found the place where Ashley was wrecked on that 
stream Just forty-four years earlier. Major Powell 
read the engraved inscription as 1855 instead of 1825. 
In his account he sends some of Ashley's men, sur- 
vivors of the wreck, over to Salt Lake City, and has 
them go to work upon the Temple ! ''^Of their sub- 
sequent history,^' remarks Major Powell, gravely, "I 
have no knowledge." 

This, as Mr. Chittenden points out in his admirable 
work, "The American Fur T'rade," is one of the jests 
of Western history, for Ashley was on the Green 
River thirty years before the Mormons left Missouri ! 
We shall need to allow a few years to pass before we 
come to the transcontinental migration of the Mor- 
mons and the building of their Temple. Ashley 
foreran all that. He was at Salt Lake and on the 
Green River, and quite across the Mormon country, a 
short time after the first Astorian party had passed 
on west. 

Thus, if we begin to study too closely into the early 
history of the trans-Missouri, we begin to lose all re- 
spect for its mysteries, and come to think of it as a 
country that was never new, but was alwaysi well 
known. Indeed, there is much warrant for this. Wit- 
ness again the journeys of that straightforward char- 
acter. Lieutenant Pike, the first American officer to 



338 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

reach the headwaters of the ^lississippi Eiver, and to 
arrange for the proper respect for the American flag 
in that far-off country. After Pike had returned 
down the Mississippi Eiver and had heen ordered to 
explore the countr}^ near the Eockies, around the 
headwaters of the Eed Eiver, he began to cross the 
trails of some of these earlier adventurers of whom 
we have been speaking. Thus, in 1806, while Pike 
is making his way across the the plains, he hears of 
Lewis and Clark's descent of the Missouri. On 
August nineteenth, 1806, he states that he finds the 
"place where Mr. Chouteau formerly had his fort." 
Chouteau was one of these same early fur traders, as 
we shall find if we care to go into the minutiae of his- 
tory. Lieutenant Pike describes this fort, as "al- 
ready overgrown with vegetation;" so it could not 
have been new in 1806. 

From this point Lieutenant Pike goes to "Manuel 
Liza's fort," which then marked another advance 
.post of the trans-Missouri travel. Next he heads 
westward, touches the Grand and White rivers 
and reaches the Solomon Fork. Here he meets the 
Pawnees, discovers that they are wearing Spanish 
medals, learns that the Spaniards have sent an expe- 
dition into that country from the New Mexican set- 
tlements, and finds a "very large road" over which 
the Spaniards have returned to the westward. Thus 



THE TRANS-MISSOURI 339 

it seems tliat not even good Zebulon was to have 
a West all his own. 

Forsooth, Lieutenant Pike might have gone back 
more than two hundred years, and have bethought 
himself of the old Spaniard Coronado, who in the 
year 1540 journeyed from Mexico across the plains 
until he stood on the banks of the Missouri River, 
from which Pike himself started forth. And strange 
enough, if we seek for coincidences, is the fact that 
Coronado himself recounts that he met on the Mis- 
souri River, that is to say, on the stream that is now 
called the Missouri, an Indian who wore a silver 
medal that was evidently the work of a white man. 
There is something singular for you, if you seek a 
strange incident ! Where did Coronado's Indian get 
his medal? This was closer to the first of things. 
It must have come from the settlements of the whites 
on the lower Atlantic slope. But by what process of 
travel ? Are we indeed to have any mysteries in the 
West, and shall we ever be able to set any date in our 
scheme of transportation properly to be called 
initial ? 

If we look at a map of the trans-Missouri as it 
existed in 1840, prior to the official exploration of 
the West, we shall indeed find that ^'Tiardly one of the 
great geographical features was unknown." We shall 
find the Missouri and the Yellowstone rivers dotted 



340 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

thick with the stockades of the fur traders. We shall 
find, if we seai'ch in the records of those days, that 
the whites had long lived among the Indians and had 
come to know their ways. We shall discover, if we 
care to helieve such apochryphal history as that of- 
fered by the ostensible Indian captive, John D. 
Hunter,* that the Indian himself has been some- 
thing of an explorer. Hunter tells of plains In- 
dians, dwellers of the prairie country near the Mis- 
souri, who themselves made the transcontinental 
journey and saw the mouth of the Columbia. He 
states that this journey was traditional at that time, 
and adds that he himself, with a party of plains 
Indians, likewise made this journey to the Columbia, 
crossing the Eockies at a different pass in coming 
back from that met with in the western journey. 

We may believe his story or not, as we like ; but we 
are bound to believe that these plains Indians ante- 
dated the first white men in the discovery of the South 
Pass aind of many other features of the Eocky Moun- 
tains. It is doubtful, indeed, whether any party of 
white men in those early days ever crossed the moun- 
tains excepting under the entire or partial guidance 



♦This story of an alleged captivity among the Indians, ex- 
tending from childhood to young manhood, is by some consid- 
ered unauthentic. The volume, a curious one, was printed in 
London, in 1825. 



THE TEANS-MISSOUEI 341 

of Indians, who took them over country known to 
themselves. 

We may believe, therefore, that the nati ve Indian 
savages furnished the source of original knowledge 
to our first explorers. If you be familiar with the 
Rockies of to-day, you shall now and again see the 
old Indian trails, overgrown and unused, sinking 
back into the earth. In the valley of the Two Medi- 
cine, on the reservation of those same Blackfeet who 
once fought the trappers so boldly, the writer once 
found, high up on the mountain side, a plainly 
traceable trail that led down to the summit of a 
high ridge, whence one could look far to the east- 
ward, to where the Sweet Grass hills loomed out 
of the level sweep of the prairies. There was a 
hunter with me, a man married among the Blackfeet, 
of whom I asked regarding this trail. ^^It is the old 
Kootenai trail,'' said he; "and if you follow this back 
to the West, it will take you through a pass of the 
Rockies and into the country of the Flatheads." 

Here, then, was indeed an ancient and historic 
pathway, one not used to-day by any rails of iron, nor 
followed even by the pack trains of the "adventurers" 
of to-day. Here was a pass discovered, no man may 
tell when, by Indians who wandered eastward and 
westward across the upper Rockies. Perhaps the old 
trappers also know this trail; though there are not 



342 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

wanting those wlio believe that less than a double 
decade ago the valleys at the headwaters of the St. 
Mary's Lake still lay untouched by the foot of white 
man. Here, along this forgotten mountain trail, 
came the Kootenais with their war parties against 
the Blackf eet. Here, perhaps, came, from the upper 
Pacific coast, the first horses used by the Plains 
Indians in the far North. Be that as it may, my 
companion and I without doubt stood on one of the 
original or aboriginal pathways ; and he had been dull 
indeed who did not find an interest in that fact 
and in the surroundings.* 

^^Who made the first Indian trails?" I asked of my 
friend, as we stood at the eastern end of this old 
pathway. He pointed to similar paths crossing the 
sides of the ridge near to us, and other little paths 
leading up the valley along the sides of the moun- 
tains. 

"It was the elk and the deer and the mountain 
sheep," said he. '^They found the easiest ways to 
travel; they found the grass and the water." 



♦The trail of the white race over the Appalachians was but 
the trail of the red men. The Sioux Indians, for generations 
Inhabitants of the upper plains country of the West, formerly 
lived east of the Appalachians. The first settlers of Kentucky 
and Tennessee simply followed the ancient ways by which the 
Indians crossed Into the valley of the Mississippi. And there, as 
in the West, the Indians but followed the paths of the wild ani- 
mals, which clung nearly as possible to the courses of the 
streams,— V, "The Indians of To-day:" Grinnell, 



CHAPTER V 

ACKOSS THE WATERS* 

Twenty-five years ago potatoes were so high in 
price in certain towns of the Eocky Mountains that 
the merchants handling them often reserved the 
right to retain the peelings, which, in turn, were sold 
for planting purposes, the eyes of the potatoes thus 
having a considerable commercial value, obviously 
in proportion to the distance from the nearest rail- 
road or steamboat line. This situation could not 
forever endure. There must come a day when we 
could afford to throw away our peelings, and throw 
them away cut thick and carelessly. Equally true is 
it that the time is coming in America when we shall 
again gather up our potato-peelings and cherish them. 
There you have the three ages of the West.f 



♦The Century Magazine, January, 1902. 

tAnother instance of changed standards in the West may be 
seen in the revolution as to petty prices. Up to twenty years 
ago, In most Rocky Mountain communities, the quarter-dollar 
Avas the smallest coin in circulation. With the railroads came 
the dime, the nickel, and at last the penny; but they came to 
a West that was no more. 

A Montana periodical thus comments on these matters as they 
appeared at the time when the railroad reached Miles City: 

'•The advent of the Northern Pacific Railroad, in November, 
l^!^!. brought about a complete change in the methods and man- 

343 



344 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

The early American life was primitive, but it was 
never the life of a peasantry. Look ahead into the 
future, the time of the second saving of the peelings. 
Once there was a time in the West when every man 
was as good as his neighbor, as well situated, as much 
contented. It would take hardihood to predict such 
conditions in the future for the West or for America. 

For half a hundred years America looked across 
the Alleghanies. It was nearer to England than to 
Iowa. Our standards in fashion, in art, in literature, 
were yet those of an older world. Then came the age 
of Americanism, when it mattered not to the women 
of the frontier what were the modes brought in the 
latest ship from London or Paris. Under the Mon- 
roe doctrine of the frontier the women made their 
petticoats of elkskin, and found it good. Behold 
now a day when Iowa is as near as England, and 
England almost as. near as New York. Again the 
contents of the ships are valid matter of curiosity 
to the women of the West. • 



ners of the people. The railroad brought the community at once 
in touch with the more concise and narrower life of 'the States'; 
the 'nickel' displaced the 'quarter' as the smallest coin in use, 
and prices shrunk accordingly. . . . This proposed innovation 
was hotly contested for a while by the adherents of the 'two-bit' 
theory, resulting finally in a compromise that established 'two- 
for-a-quarter' as the going rate. It would be hard to describe 
the feeling of dejection that overwhelmed the old-timers when 
this conclusion was reached. It was accepted by them as a, pro- 
nounced and evident sign of decadence," 



ACROSS THE WATERS 845 

We are in the third age, the age of steam. The 
pack-horse and the sailboat were vehicles of the in- 
dividual or of the section. Wheeled vehicles afforded 
a speedier and more flexible intercommunication that 
made the idea of secession forever impossible, and 
made us a national America. The common carrier 
made us and will destroy us as a national entity. The 
wheels have written epochal record on the surface of 
the land. Long and devious and delightful, weary 
and sad and tragic, are the old wheel-tracks of the 
West, worn deep into a soil red with blood, on paths 
lined with flowers, and with graves as well. 

At the half-way point of the century the early 
wheels of the West were crawling and creaking over 
trails where now rich cities stand. The Red River 
carts from Pembina, their wheels sawn from the ends 
of logs, and voicing a mile-wide protest of unlubri- 
cated axle, crept down to a "St. PaulV^ that had 
a population of about twelve hundred, mostly half- 
breeds.* A yard of cloth or a butcher-knife still 
sold for twenty dollars at old Fort Benton in the 
beaver country. 



*A settler who moved, in 1854, from Virginia to Iowa com- 
plained that for a whole year in that frontier country he saw no 
fruit except a half-peck of crab-apples. It was much the same In 
Minnesota at that time; yet, in the year 1900, the city of St. Paul 
alone used one thousand dollars' worth of grapes each day for 
fifty days, all imported, and at an average price of only fifteen 
cents per basket. This fruit was largely imported from the state 
Of New York. 



346 THE AVAY TO THE WEST 

The Western railroads were only little spurs of 
iron thrusting out into the prairies. Indeed, 
they could not always boast rails of iron, as wit- 
ness the old wooden-railed road from Chicago 
to Galena. Still eager, still harkening to the Voices 
of the West, the men who were to make the West 
pressed on, taking the railway as far as it went, 
then the stage-coach and the wagon and the horse 
and the lone path of the farthest venturer. 

The man of Virginia heard that the prairies of 
Iowa would give him a farm for a price per acre less 
than one-tenth that commanded by the red clay hills 
of the Old Dominion. He forsook the land of terrapin 
and peaches, of honeysuckle and sunshine, and started 
West by rail across the Alleghanies, across Ohio by 
the early Pennsylvania railway system, beyond the 
boom town of Chicago, across the Mississippi, and 
out into the black mud of the prairies for fifty miles 
or so. Thence by stage he went, the head of his tear- 
ful wife against his breast, but in that breast beating 
a heart whose one thought was the ^T^etter 
chance." It was the better chance for these babes 
that tugged at the skirts of their mother — ^this was 
what the father wanted, and this was why the mother 
went with him, grieving, as she yet must, for the 
home land that she perhaps would never see again. 

One such settler, who went West from Virginia 



ACROSS THE WATERS 347 

into an agricultural state in 1854, said that he came 
West in order that he might be able to educate his 
children. He educated them. To-day one child is 
buried in California, one in Dakota, three live in 
Iowa, and one in Illinois. Such is the typical record 
of an American family. 

The man of old New England might cross this 
trail of the Southern man, and find himself betimes 
in Kansas or Nebraska, forerunner of that day when 
it was to be said that Massachusetts was west of the 
Missouri River, as indeed is true to-day. Boston be- 
gan to build Chicago, and the first of those men went 
West that were to make the old Red River cart-towns 
of St. Paul and Minneapolis little else than New 
England communities — cities of a state which to-day 
has a permanent school fund of nearly eight million 
dollars, and a university fund of nearly one million 
dollars, in securities largely made up of the bonds 
of otlier states, among them a large amount of the 
funding bonds of the ancient state of Virginia. It 
was a race into the West — a race in which now the 
North outstripped the South, the commercial outran 
the heroic, the ax and the plow outstripped the rifle 
and its creed. 

In 1826 arose one Philip Evans Thomas, sometime 
known as the father of American railroads, son of 
a Baltimore banker, and living, as we may thus no- 



348 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

tice as a curious fact, near to that early abiding-place 
of the star that marked the center of American 
population, that Ararat from which the AVestem 
civilization started outward. Early in his life Philip 
Evans Thomas saw how excellent it would be if only 
water could be made to run up-stream. He had seen 
the use of railroads in England, and had, moreover, 
noted the beneficial effects upon the trade of Eastern 
cities of the traffic that was carried by canals. He 
had the far-reaching mind of the world-merchant, 
whose problem! is ever that of transportation. He 
saw that railroads/ can go where canals can not, 
and he presently resigned his directorship in the 
Maryland Canal, because he saw that a canal can 
not climb a hill, and that mankind could not forever 
go around the hills or up and down the streams. 

It was on February twelfth, 1827, that Thomas 
called together twenty-five of the leading citizens of 
Baltimore. Comment of the time says that he seemed 
touched with the spirit of prophecy as he spoke of 
the enterprise that was to cast aside the moun- 
tains, to unite the streams, and to discover what 
there might be in that mysterious land, the West — 
the West that was west of the Alleghanies and 
in or near the Mississippi valley. Beyond the Mis- 
sissippi, of course, the mind of man might not go! 
The minutes of this notable railway meeting are pre- 



ACROSS THE WATERS 349 

served in a pamphlet known as "Proceedings of Sun- 
dry Citizens of Baltimore, convened for the Purpose 
of Devising the Most Efficient Means of Improv- 
ing Intercourse between Baltimore and the Western 
States." 

There were two opinions as to the wisdom of 
Mr. Thomas's project, and these were the opinions 
of the iNTorth and of the South; for again the South 
was to be the pioneer into the West, and again the 
North was to follow. The cities of the North made 
loud outcry against the Baltimore prophet, and said 
that this railroad, if built, would divert from them 
forever the traffic that was then coming to them 
from the West. This was ever the typical attitude of 
the upper East toward the West. 

None the less the enterprise went on, and the Bal- 
timore and Ohio Railroad Company was duly organ- 
ized, an act for its incorporation being passed on 
February twenty-seventh, 1827. The stamp of suc- 
cess was upon the idea before the ink had dried 
on the records. By April twenty-fourth of the 
same year stock was subscribed to the figure of four 
million one hundred and seventy-eight thousand dol- 
lars. The first railway planned for the West — 
planned because there was a West and because that 
West was wanted as a part of the East — was promptly 
elevated into one of the most important commercial 



350 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

enterprises of the time. Tlie stock was coveted by 
all, and the struggle was for first place in the line 
of purchasers. 

It can not be within the present purpose to particu- 
larize as to the railroad development of the West, 
nor to attempt the unimportant chronological record 
of first one and then another of the multiplying rail- 
ways that early began to crowd out into the West 
from the Eastern centers. The important thing is 
the tremendous expansion of population that now 
ensued for the Western states, the blackening of the 
census maps in spaces once barren, the crossing and 
interweaving of the Northern and Southern popula- 
tions, which now occurred as both sections pressed 
out into the West. There were grandfathers in Vir- 
ginia now, grandfathers in New England. The sub- 
divided farms were not so large. There were more 
shops in the villages. There was demand for ex- 
pansion of the commerce of that day. The little 
products must find their market, and that market 
might still be American. The raw stuff might still 
be American, the producer of it might still be Ameri- 
can. So these busy, thrifty, ambitious men came up 
and stood back of the vanguard that held the flexi- 
ble frontier. Silently men stole out yet farther into 
what West there was left; but they always looked 



ACROSS THE WATERS 351 

back over the shoulder at this new thing that had 
come upon the land. 

Thinking men knew, half a century ago, that 
there must be an iron way across the United States, 
though they knew this only in general terms, and 
were only guessing at the changes that such a 
road must bring to the country at large. Some of 
these guesses make interesting reading to-day. Thus, 
in 1855 it was announced as a settled thing that the 
continental route could not lie across the Northern 
Rockies, because in that region the heavy snowfall 
would block all railway travel. It was concluded 
that there were only four points on the Pacific coast 
to which the railway might address itself: San 
Diego, San Francisco, "some spot to be chosen on the 
navigable waters of the Columbia," and another "on 
the borders of the Strait of De Fuca, in the new 
Territory of Washington." 

The government of the country was so slow in de- 
veloping this railway project that some capitalists 
were for building at once a road of their own, and 
they chose the route from Charleston to San Diego. 
What would it have meant to this country had this 
been the first and only railway across the continent? 
As to the route up the Platte valley and over the mid- 
Rockies, that was dismissed as quite impracticable. 
^^The absence of timber on most of this route would 



352 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

prove an insuperable objection to its selection, even 
were it not ineligible from other considerations/' 
comments one writer of the day. The same writer* 
says that the route from San Francisco to St. Louis 
would be geographically preferable, but admits that 
the ''^formation of the intermediate country, and the 
character of the mountain-ranges to be crossed, are 
deemed to present insuperable difficulties to its con- 
struction.'^ 

The bearing of these reflections upon the purpose 
in hand is not so much one of mere literary 
curiousness as one of commercial comparison. The 
logic of that time carried a large 7ion sequitur, 
"The country intervening between the most western 
limits of civilization and the recently settled terri- 
tories of the Pacific," says the same early historian, 
"is confessedly little known." The empire of the 
Middle West was not dreamed of. This is what the 
new road was to do: 

"Instead of weary months of travel around the 
capes of Africa and South America, less than a 
month will suffice to transport the teas and silks of 
China, the coffee and the spices of Java and Ceylon, 
to the great Atlantic cities, thence to be distributed 
as from the world's depot to the nations of Europe. 
But not only will this new mode of transit take to 



♦Henry Howe; "The Great West" (1855). 



ACROSS THE WATERS 353 

itself the best and most remunerative part of the 
traffic now existing between eastern Asia and Chris- 
tendom^ but it will also create a new traffic, compared 
with which the trade now existing will bear almost 
no comparison. 

"Instead of here and there a seaport in China hold- 
ing conimercial relations with America, this nearness 
of access to the best markets of the world will stimu- 
late into an unprecedented activity the raising of all 
agricultural products, the manufacture of all goods 
and wares, and the disinterring of all the mineral 
resources which the three hundred millions of China 
can furnish us, at a cheaper rate than we can obtain 
them elsewhere. Japan, with a population almost 
double our own, now shut out from all intercourse 
with the rest of the world, must soon be forced by 
the strength of circumstances to welcome to her 
ports the merchant fleets of other nations, anxious 
and eager to distribute to the wide world the rich 
products of her soil, her climate, and her domestic 
industry. The tropical fruitfulness of the over-popu- 
lated islands of the Eastern Archipelago will also 
pour, in increased abundance, the rich spices of their 
balmy breezes through this new and rapid conduit." 

Not so bad was this flowery prophecy, though its 
fulfilment was to run over into another century, and 
to fall subsequent to a still greater industrial phe- 



354 ACROSS THE WATEHS 

nomenon, the gourd-like maturing of the trarLS-Mi&- 
ibouri region.* This rapid development of the inte- 
rior region of America was not foreseen by the wisest 
of the prophets of fifty years ago. Yet unspeakably 
swift and startling as it has been, it was, after all, 
the product of an arrested growth, of an advance- 
ment upon lines substantially different from those 
on which it was originally and naturally projected. 

As once the West had sought to secede, now at 
length the South, foster-mother of the West, bethought 
herself to set up a separate land, even at the very time 
when there was in progress a great transcontinental 
project that was to make all this country one, for- 
ever and inseparable. It was the Civil War that de- 
layed the construction of the Pacific railway. Had 
that road been built, had the roads from the North 



*In the year 190O began the great tendency toward consolida- 
tion in railway interests. Nor did the sequence cease at this point. 
In the same year there were begun, for use upon the Pacific 
Ocean in connection with this same transcontinental route, five 
giant ocean-going freight ships, the largest yet known, each to be 
750 feet in length, of 74 feet beam, and with a carrying capacity 
of 22,000 tons. These ships will carry American cotton to Japan, 
for use instead of the short-staple cotton of India, until recently 
used by Japan. They will enable the railroad-builders of Japan 
to figure as exactly on the price of a ton of rails as can the con- 
tractor of Kansas or Nebraska. They will lay down a barrel of 
Minnesota flour in China or the Philippines at a cost for carriage 
of not over $1.25. All this shows to what extent American com- 
merce, made active by American transportation methods, is in- 
vading the markets of the world; for, at this same time, Russia 
can not lay down a barrel of (an inferior) flour at the seaboard of 
China for less than $4.25. Surely our prophet of 1855 dreamed more 
wisely than he knew! 



ACROSS THK WATKRS 355 

into the South been built half a generation earlier, 
there could never have been any Civil War. The in- 
dissoluble brotherhood of the Nortli and the South 
would have been established a generation before, and 
at what untold saving of splendid human life ! This 
war, fatally and fatefully early — early by a quarter 
of a century, since after that quarter-century it could 
never have attained importance, or could never have 
been at all — changed history in America more than 
any written history has ever shown. Still curiously 
and intimately connected, it was the South and the 
West that were to suffer most in that war, cruel 
as this may sound to that splendid East that poured 
its blood like water and its treasure with a freedom 
the West might not equal. 

The industrial revolution of the West was subse- 
quent to the Civil War, and was, to large extent, 
caused by the Civil War, or, rather, was dependent 
upon the same conditions that had part in bringing 
forth that war. The vast and virgin West, '^con- 
fessedly but little known," lay waiting for a popula- 
tion. The Eastern portion of the Northern States 
had its own population. The South, under the con- 
ditions of that day, offered incalculably more oppor- 
tunity for crude labor than did the West; but it of- 
fered no security for either capital or labor. There- 
fore it was that the Old World was called upon to 



356 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

furnish the raw labor requisite to subdue this wild 
land. 

It can be only with horror that we reflect that the 
Old World was called upon also to furnish us a peo- 
ple to replace the more than half-million dead of 
as grand a population as the world ever knew/ the 
flower of America, North, South, East, and West. It 
would have been this splendid army of men that 
would have settled the West, had it not been for the 
war, which a few years later would have been an im- 
Ijossible thing. Could that half-million dead have 
arisen from the grave in the decade following that 
truly cruel war, the nomenclature of many West- 
ern cities would be different to-day, and the face of 
the census maps would show a different story. To- 
day the whole upper portion of the population chart 
of the United States is black with the indication of 
a foreign-born population. The only part of this 
country that the census map dares call American 
is a thin, wavering line along the plateaus of Tennes- 
see and Kentucky, — the land that the first adventurers 
sought out when they crossed the Alleghanies. It is 
the South alone that is to-day American. It was 
the South that gave us the new-American, that 
splendid figure in the history of the world. 

Within two months in the year 1899, fifty-seven 
thousand foreigners were brought to this country 



ACEOSS THE WATERS 357 

to be made over into Americans. Among these were 
Croatians, Slavs, Armenians, Bohemians, Servians, 
Montenegrins, Dalmatians, Bosnians, Herzegovin- 
ians, Moravians, Lithuanians, Magyars, Jews, Syr- 
ians, Turks, Slovaks, with others of the better-known 
nationalities, such as English, Germans, French, and 
Scandinavians. Of the total number of these immi- 
grants, less than one-tenth had a capital as great as 
thirty dollars with which to begin life in the new 
land. Many of these immigrants from lower Europe 
linger in the cities of the West, and do not become 
a part of the agricultural commlunities; but the indi- 
rect tax on the agricultural communities none the 
less remains. They become only parasites upon the 
parasitic middlemen, and all these must be supported 
by the farms. 

It must be conceded that the new problems as- 
signed to the West in the way of absorption and 
assimilation of alien population in these days 
of rapid transportation are nothing short of 
serious and perplexing. These new people, brought 
out in swarms by means of the rapid wheels of steam- 
locomotion, are like the early Americans who settled 
first a real America. They are very poor; their fare 
must be coarse, their garb mean, their opportunities 
for self -improvement but meager. Yet how different 
^re they, the product of the third age of transporta- 



358 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

tion, from those Argonauts, the Southern riflemen 
and the Northern axmen, who toiled with oar or 
slow-moving wheel across this land in the days so 
recently gone by ! 

There are three great pictures of the West — one 
that was, one that is, and one that might have 
been. This last picture is a sad one to any 
thinking man not concerned in politics. The 
West of steam-transportation has not so much im- 
pressed itself, and in reason could not be expected 
so to impress itself, upon its population as did that 
West reached by slow-moving wheels when the natural 
difficulties to be overcome were so vastly greater for 
the individual. The old West begot character, grew 
mighty individuals, because such were its soil and 
sky and air, its mountains, its streams, its long and 
devious trails, its constant stimulus and challenge. 

That which was to be has been. The days of the 
adventurers are gone. There are no longer any Voices 
to summon heroes out on voyage of mystic conquest. 
It now costs not so much heroism, but so much 
money, to get out into the West, and it costs so much 
to live thei'^. As a region the West offers few special 
opportunities. It is no longer a poor man's country, 
nor is any part of America a country good for a 
poor man. It is all much alike. Our young men of 
the West are as apt to go East to seek their fortunes 






ACROSS THE WATERS 359 

as to try them near at home. There is no land of the 

free. America is not American. Food must digest 

before it can be flesh and blood, and our population ^^^^O--^^ 

must jigfist before it can be calledAmeri£an. •*-— 

Twelve years ago money brought two per cent, a 
month west of the Missouri Eiver, and it earned it. 
To-day you can get a barrelf ul at five per cent, a year. 
It is only free men who can afford to pay two per 
cent, a month — men who still have open lands to 
settle, much raw wealth to dig out of the earth and a 
future to discount. There are no more Oklahomas 
now. We have stolen most of the reservations from 
tlie Indians, and a few men have stolen most of the 
pine,* and nothing short of a syndicate will do for 
a mine to-day. You may search far for eagle faces, 
such as came from Maine and Carolina, the men that 
followed the westward course of the young star of 
America. 

Away with the saddle-blanket ! The beaver are 
gone, and the range cattle are all fenced in. 
Hang up the rifle, for our great game is van- 
ishing. If you seek a pleasant picture, gaze on the 
accumulating balance-sheets of some monopolist's 
millions. If you wish to hear a soothing sound, lis- 



*The desecration of America, in the terrible devastation of 
her forests, is something no observant man can face with com- 
posure. 



360 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

ten to the wheels that go and come. Content your- 
self with these things; else you must admit that, 
however strong, brilliant, and consistent was our 
Western drama in the more slowly moving days, his- 
tory has made anticlimax in the days of steam. 
Carry your conclusions out whimsically if you like, 
and reflect that in the year 1900 not only our own 
Western cow-punchers, but also the samurai of 
Japan, were riding bicycles, and the newspapers of 
Japan were reporting the prize-lights of America! 
This is civilization, but the view of it is not alto- 
gether comforting.* 

Augur of what might have been, but for our Civil 
War, was that long line of white-topped wagons that 
streamed westward across Illinois, Iowa, across the 



♦The time is not one for individual optimism, and the old 
hopefully self-reliant spirit of the West must be content to lose 
its personal quality in the larger and vaguer, though not less 
certain, tendencies of modern life. Bearing upon a theme kindred 
to the above, James Bryce, author of "The American Common- 
wealth," recently found occasion to write: 

"National ideals to-day tend toward a large and strong state, 
with vast external possessions, with a huge army and navy, with 
an extending trade, and great consequent wealth; and the ideal 
of education is less toward 'unprofitable culture' and more toward 
subjects that enable men to raise themselves in the world. People 
now talk more about capital and labor. Formerly there seemed 
rather more faith in the power of reason, rather more hope of 
progress to be secured by political change. Altogether there 
seemed rather more of a sanguine spirit formerly. Mankind must 
never cease to cherish and follow the dream of that golden age, 
which at one time they believed to lie in the past, but which for 
some centuries had been supposed to glimmer in the future. They 
must never forget that hope. But the golden age SQcrued nearer 
in 1850 than it does now," 



ACROSS THE WATERS 361 

Missouri River, out into the West, the still glorious 
and alluring West, imjmediately upon the close of 
the war. This was not an influx of foreigners, but 
a hejira of native Americans, a flood-tide that 
could not wait for the railroads that were now so 
swiftly taking up the new and mighty problems 
of a convalescent country. "By an impulse, provi- 
dential or evolutionary, but irresistible," said an 
American statesman of that decade,* "civilization 
has, during the present generation, moved all at 
once and in concert, in a process of territorial expan- 
sion as sudden and inexplicable as that which at the 
close of the fifteenth century impelled the nations 
of Europe to voyages which resulted in the discovery 
and occupation of America. . . . The United 
States will command the greatest part of the trade 
with the Chinese Orient. We can produce every 
article that can be sold in this new and limitless 
market." Not bad reiteration, this, of the prophecy 
of our historian of 1855. The latter did not foresee 
our Civil War, nor could he have foreseen our armies 
across seas. They are there not so much by reason 
of political mistakes or political wisdom as by an im- 
pulse "providential or evolutionary." In 1865, upon 
the plains, or in 1900, in the Asian islands, the army 



*The late Cushman K. Davis, United States senator from 
Minnesota. 



362 THE WAY TO THE WEST i 

was only the escort. It is not our army that will j 
conquer new provinces and create new opportunities 
in place of those with which we have been so sadly 
careless and so lavishly generous; it is our railways , 
and our steamshipsi that are to prove our conquer- 
ing agencies. Thereby we shall recoup ourselves at | 
the coffers of the world. i 

We lose all sentimental regrets and superficial | 

reservations when we come to examine closely the I 

tremendous revolutions created by the genius of I 

modern transportation. With the era of steam came 1 

a complete reversal of all earlier methods. For ! 

nearly a century following the Eevolutionary War , 

the new lands of America had waited upon the trans- | 

portation. Now the transportation facilities were i 

to overleap history and to run in advance of progress i 
itself. The railroad was not to depend upon the 

land, but the land upon the railroad. It was strong i 

faith in the future civilization that enabled capi- i 

talists to build one connected line of iron from Ore- ! 

gon down the Pacific coast, thence east of the mouth I 

of the Father of Waters, in all over thirty-two hun- i 
dred miles of rail. Then came that darin^_flig^i^' 
of the Sant^^j]g^cross the seas of sand, a venture 
derided^asfplly and recklessness. 

The proof you may find by seeing the cities that ' 

have grown, the fields which bear them tribute. North ' 



ACROSS THE WATERS 363 

and south and east and west the prairie roads run. 
The long trail of the cattle-drive is gone, and the cat- 
tle no longer walk a thousand miles to pasture or to 
market. Once, twice, thrice, the continent was 
spanned, the dream of Robertson made manifoldly 
true, and the path across the continent laid well and 
laid forever.* In the Middle West the Great Ameri- 
can Desert was cross-hatched with iron lines and 
dotted full with homes that never could have been 
hut for those iron lines. In the Northwest lay a 
land of almost arctic winters, with little or no shel- 
ter, with short and torrid summers, the land of the 
Red River carts, where the fur traders were at last 
replaced by the raisers of number two hard wheat. 

Into this region came a large foreign population, 
sought out in the Old World by the diligent agents of 
a common carrier needing business. The hard plains 
of the North were literally stocked with these people. 
They came with their tickets bought through to such 
or such a point in Minnesota or Dakota. It was fore- 
seen that the mere raising of wheat could not build 
up a permanent civilization, and the railway did the 
thinking for the blind ones who had taken its word 
and risked their lives and fortunes in the removal 



*In 1902 Canada began to emulate the history of the United 
State, and planned for the building of two more transcontinental 
railways. She could inflict no greater blow to the United States. 
V. also Chap. V, Vol, IV; "The Pathways of the Future." 



364 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

to that America which had so wide and various an 
interpretation. The railway sent out, free and un- 
solicited, seed wheat and choice breeding-stock, drop- 
ping these contributions wisely, here and there, into 
such communities as most needed them. The rail- 
way was explorer, carrier, provider, thinker, heart, 
soul, and intellect for this population that in 
another generation was to be American. No wonder 
these folk stand and stare when the railway-train 
goes by. It has been Providence to them. It is a 
Providence that has given to Europe what America 
might have had. 

To-day towns do not grow merely because of their 
location, and this factor of location will become less 
and less important as the years go by. St. Louis was 
a city of location; Chicago is a city of transportation. 
Chicago is situated upon the most impossible and 
unlovely of all places of human habitation. She is 
simply a city of transportation, and is no better than 
her rails and boats, though by her rails and boats 
she lives in every Western state and territory. The 
same is true now of St. Louis and the vast South- 
west. 

One railroad recently planned for a Western ex- 
tension, and laid out along its lines the sites of 
.thirty-eight new towns, each of which was located 
and named before the question of inhabitants for the 



ACROSS THE WATERS 365 

towns was ever taken up. Another railway in the 
Southwest has named fifty cities that are yet to 
huild; and still others have scores of communities 
that in time are to be the battle-grounds of human 
lives, the stages of the human tragedy or comedy. 
The railways have not only reached but created prov- 
inces; they have not only nourished but conceived 
com'munities. Out of that cold upper land of the 
Northwest, which was thus fostered and nurtured into 
strength, there came, in one year, one hundred and 
ten million bushels of wheat to feed the world, and 
that in a year when the crop shortage was over one 
hundred million bushels. TMs is only a part of the 
output of that land, for the railway showed these 
farmers long ago that diversifi ed farmi ng was their 
hope and their salvation. 

Past one of those forts which in 1812 the United 
States erected to protect her fur traders and to keep 
out her covetous rivals, there came in the same year 
from the far Northwest, once home of the buffalo, the 
Indian, and the scout, twenty-five million two hun- 
dred fifty-five thousand eight hundred and ten tons 
of freight, nearly all of the long-haul sort, and hence 
to be taken as showing in part the product of the far 
Northwest itself. Three transcontinental roads, the 
Northern Pacific, the Union Pacific, and the South- 
ern Pacific, in 1899 carried twenty million one hun- 



3Gt5 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

dred forty-six thousand four hundred and ten tons of 
freight, ^dth a haul averaging about three hundred 
miles in length. 

Nearly a thousand millions of dollars is repre- 
fc^ented in the capitalization of these roads — far 
more than is demanded by the free roadway of 
the Great Lakes, the modern freight traffic of 
which is really a development subsequent to that 
of the railway exploitation of the West. This per- 
haps suggests a day when Chicago may come to be as 
closely connected with New Orleans as was the latter 
city with Kentucky in the day of Wilkinson.* It 
is impossible to study the industrial history of the 
West without studying also that of the South, for 
though the two sections are far apart and utterly un- 
like, they yet have the intercurrent soul of twins. 
No part of America is less known and more misun- 

♦Engineers disagree as to the possibility of making a ship- 
canal of the great highway of the Mississippi; but engineers 
have always disagreed about the doing of great things, and then 
have always done them. It is likely that the dream of that 
Bhrewd merchant-explorer, Louis Joliet, will eventually be realized, 
and the Chicago drainage-canal will in that case attain a great 
importance. 

Indeed, inland-water transportation may be upon the eve of a 
great development. Thus, in December, 1900, there was organized 
a canal company for the purpose of navigating the Red River of 
the North, of improving the channel by dredging, putting in locks 
and reservoirs, to regulate that historic stream into conditions 
virtually those of a canal. Another curious proposition to reach 
Congress in the same year was a bill for the purpose of building 
a ship-canal between Lake Erie and the Ohio River, an enterprise 
which would have great significance in the coal and iron trade. 
This canal would follow the course of La Salle on his first journey 



ACROSS THE WATERS 307 

derstood than tlie South, and surely it must be one 
of the most cheering reflections to conclude that 
yearly the South comes closer to the North, and the 
North to the South. Statesmanship could not in a 
century so fully have accomplished this great and 
desirable result. The railroads are doing what state- 
craft could not do. 

It is the part of the great captains of transporta- 
tion to live strenuous lives, to work out great prob- 
lems faithfully and patiently, to accomplish great re- 
sults mysteriously, to live, to die, and to be forgot- 
ten. The heroes of the hustings, the heroes of our 
wars, are remembered and immortalized. The man 
that makes possible their triumphs finds no record 
on the page of time. His^^obiijiaiy is only the pass; 
ing chr onicl e of the daily press, feverishly concerned 
with what is known as news. 

To-day James F. Joy, the father of the Michigan 
Central Railroad, is little known by the general pub- 
lic, though his was a far greater work than that of 

from the Great Lakes— the old south-bound war-trail of the Six 
Nations. Geography, of all things, seems to repeat itself. No one 
may tell what new importance this canal proposition may attain, 
though it may be dormant for a time. 

Early in the year 1901 the leading journals of Germany were 
discussing the prospects of a canal from Chicago to the Atlantic 
Ocean, and held the enterprise practicable. 

As showing the extent of water-transportation on our Great 
Lakes, it may be stated that more tonnage passes Sault Ste. Marie 
In seven months of each year than goes through the Suez Canal 
in three years. The city of Duluth alone, at the head of the 
•water-trail, has a tonnage each year of more than 11,500,000 tons. 



868 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

seeking public office. John Murray Forbes, father 
of the great Burlington and Quincy system, is 
a man too much forgotten. As these lines 
are written comes the news of the death of 
Henry Villard, the man that solved so many 
problems for the Northern Pacific. Dropped for the 
time out of sight, he will now shortly follow the fate 
of his compeers, and soon be dropped forever. Will- 
iam Henry Osbom died only a few years ago, yet 
there are many who make the winter trip to the Gulf 
coast that do not know who planned the flight of 
rails that runs from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. It 
is a duty and a pleasure to mention the names of such 
great and useful men, if only to ask that their 
work be held in understanding memory. 

Especially significant now is the memory of Mr. 
Osbom, and we might well speak of him as assistant 
and coadjutor of such men as Lincoln and Grant, and 
the statesmen who since the war have sought to unite 
North and South. As we find that it was the South 
that first marched westward, and a Southern man who 
first planned a great highway of iron into the West, 
we may state with equal pleasure and confidence 
that it was the East, and an Eastern man, that made 
the South a portion of the West, and both a part of 
a united America. 

William H. Osborn was a native of Massachusetts, 



ACROSS THE WATERS 369 

and was by birth of no exalted position in 
the world. His chief capital was a clear brain and 
an unclouded purpose, which later ripened into a far- 
Bightedness in large affairs that has rarely been 
equaled in the ranks of practical American men. 
Sent to the East Indies as the representative of a 
New York firm, he got a good insight into the trade 
in spices, and was successful in its operation. Later 
he married the second daughter of that sterling 
American merchant, Jonathan Sturges of New York, 
whose first daughter was the first wife of J. Pierpont 
Morgan. Mr. Sturges was heavily interested in the 
young Illinois Central Railroad, the first of the land- 
grant railways, the original seven hundred and five 
miles of which were intended to develop the agri- 
cultural lands of the great prairie state of Illinois, 
and to bear the products of that state up to the 
water-transport of the Great Lakes, which then car- 
ried most of the long-haul business from the West 
to the East. 

The original lines of this road were laid out in the 
form of a large Y, one leg of which ran from Du- 
buque, Iowa, southward, meeting the other leg, which 
extended south from Chicago. The two legs of the 
Y met at what is now Central City, and thence the 
line ran south to Cairo. This road was one of the 
earliest attempts to parallel the old water-highways 



370 THE W:AY TO THE WEST 

that had once carried the freight of a riparian pop- 
ulation. Its first grant was made in 1850, and its 
first train was run in 1855. During the war this 
line was of much service in transporting troops and 
material to the southward. 

Yet, in spite of its well-conceived plan, and in 
spite of the natural wealth of the country it 
traversed, the road as a property was a source 
of perpetual anxiety to its shareholders. It 
needed a great mind to straighten out its problems, 
and Mr. Sturges thought that his son-in-law had that 
mind. He therefore despatched Mr. Osborn to Chi- 
cago, and gave him full charge of the system. The 
choice was a wise one. Mr. Osborn brought the prop- 
erty through the panic of 1857, when all securities 
were falling in ruins, and weathered even an assign- 
ment, which was made by the company during his 
absence in England. He backed his faith in his 
judgment by negotiating a personal loan of three 
million dollars, out of which he paid the matured 
coupons that were pressing for payment. He se- 
cured a new loan of five million dollars, paid off all 
the smaller debts, established the credit of the com- 
pany, and set its affairs thenceforth upon a secure 
footing. 

All these details were such as might perhaps have 
been accomplished by another. It was not only in 



ACROSS THE WATERS 371 

these executive matters that the genius of this cap- 
tain evinced itself. He saw at once to the mar- 
row of the difficulties that had caused this embar- 
rassment. There had now been built around the 
foot of Lake Michigan those east-and-west through 
lines that killed the lake carriage just as his own 
road had killed the river carriage on the Mississippi 
trail. These roads reached out after their own busi- 
ness, and did not depend upon the traffic the 
north-and-south line carried. It was easy to foresee 
a failing business, but not so easy to name a remedy 
for it. Mr. Osbom found his remedy in the idea of 
a north-and-south transcontinental line. Between 
Cairo and the town of Jackson, Tennessee, there was 
a gap over which no railroad passed, though from 
Jackson as far south as New Orleans there ran the 
rambling lines of a system controlled by H. S. Mc- 
Comb, of Credit Mobilier fame. Mr. Osbom secured 
the immature Southern roads, built the connection 
from Cairo to Jackson, and in 1873 had a completed 
line from the Lakes to the Gulf. 

It all sounds easy, but it took one man's brain and 
one man's life to do it. The story of the road and of 
the man that made it is not yet told, but it will be 
written in the development of one of the richest sec- 
tions of America. It is writing daily in the trains 
that come from North to South, from South to 



372 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

North, agencies that dail}^ break down and pass 
through any sectional barrier and bring about the 
better understanding which makes kin one with the 
other the sons of the old riflemen and the old axmen 
who built the West. 

Thus are the trails of the two forever interwoven. 
Beside this trail of commerce runs the old trail of 
the Mississippi, whose tawny flood still carries its 
burden of adventure and romance. Robertson, 
Thomas, Whitney, Osbom, — these are the names of a 
few of the prophets, forgotten men of the early and 
the modern days, who blazed the intercurrent trails 
where now march the feet of those living under a 
complex civilization. 

From these crude studies of early Western history 
we may gather one very significant fact, which will 
mean more a hundred years from' now than it does 
to-day. It is that America got her territory first, and 
then her transportation and her population. She 
bought on a rising market, and her purchase was of 
territory, land, the only thing on earth that can not 
be increased or multiplied. Moreover, her land was 
such as the earth has never duplicated and can never 
duplicate. The magnificent American West was a 
realm unrivaled, and it was originally settled by men 
who had the most priceless of all possessions, a splen- 
did ancestry. Providence held back the wheels for 



ACEOSS THE WATEKS" 373 

a hundred years while the Western character was 
forming. 

Let us, even though by dint of effort, fling away 
the personal plaint. It is un-American to snivel, and 
as the old-time Western men would not have done 
so, neither shall we. The West is not dead. It is 
immortal. We have come upon a century of force. 
The conflict is to be the bitterest the world has ever 
known; not the conflict of man with beast, or with 
savage nature, but the conflict of masses of men, 
masses of things, one combination against another, 
one wedge of impact, head on, against another. It is 
too late to call out for an America like that of 
Washington or Jefferson; too late to ask for a prac- 
tical Monroe doctrine; too late to speak of policies 
or politics gone by. 

With Europe in fear of our Western products, 
and yet dependent upon those products; with 
America coming each day, by causes ^^prov- 
idential or evolutionary," into the plans of the 
world, of what possible avail is it to cry out for a 
West or for an America that is gone forever? Call 
back the armies if you w^ish, but you can never call 
back the wheels. The pathway points now not out 
into the West, but out into the world. Never doubt 
that the sons of the West, sons of this Anak, sons 
whose fathers are in Valhalla to-day, will follow that 



374 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

road as far and as fearlessly as they did the path 
across the continent. In the veins of these men runs 
the riot nnconqnerable, the distillation of the skies 
and winds. Their feet march now to the rhythm of 
phantom footfalls, those of the men that marched 
before from home out into the perilous unknown. 
Black men, yellow men, peasant men — all these must 
take their chances. There are no longer any vacant 
lands. Europe, which sent to the West some of its 
best and its poorest population, will have more to 
fear at the hands of the West than China has to 
dread to-day. Europe has to combat not only the 
West, but all the heredity of the West. 

This, then, is where the eagle-faced pioneers of 
America will find" their last trail. This is how the 
king will at last come again into his own. Peoples 
may pass away, monarchies may fall, but above them 
there will stand the only aristocracy fit to survive; 
not a false democracy that nominates all men as 
equal, but the aristocracy of survival. You may 
abolish many things, and in the future enact many 
things of which we of to-day may not guess ; but never 
shall there utterly perish the strong blood that got its 
survival by fitness, and its education by continuous 
conflict with mighty things. The largest, the most 
compact, and the most closely knit Caucasian popula- 
tion of the world to-day, is that of America, and to- 



ACROSS THE WATERS 375 

day America is potentially the most powerful of all 
the world-powers. Why? Because her unit of pop- 
ulation is superior. The reason for that you may 
find yourself if you care to look into the great move- 
ments of the west-bound population of America. 

As to the future steps in the development of the 
West, we may perhaps be indulged in a hazard of 
opinion, as our fathers were before us. It would seem 
sure that every inch of our agricultural lands must 
come under the plow of Belgium, and be tilled inch 
by inch. The vast Delta of the Mississippi, from 
Memphis south, the richest soil the world ever saw, 
will be a continuous garden, supporting a great pop- 
ulation of its own, and feeding thousands^ in the 
cities, in full verification of the wisdom of the man 
who foresaw that the South must be joined to the 
North, even as the West to the East. Perhaps some 
of the more barren steppe country of the West will 
ultimately be abandoned in spite of scientific irriga- 
tion, just as some of the slashed-off timber-lands of 
Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota are now being 
abandoned, in sequel to the ruinous American lum- 
bering operations.* 

*The population of Michigan In the decade 1890-1900 drifted 
rapidly toward the cities. Yet the Michigan railroads are bravely- 
trying to solve the problem of building up a population on the 
country desolated by the lumbermen, and with great success are 
developing resources in agriculture and manufactures which for 
a long time lay unsuspected. 



376 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

In tHe great river valleys there will be an enormous 
thickening of the population; so that it may yet 
be many years before the center of popula- 
tion, which in 1900 ^ras near the little town of 
Columbus, Indiana, shall have passed the Mssissippi 
Eiver in its west-bound course.* We have yet to 
learn to save our potato-peelings. We are yet to go 
more and more under task-masters, are to learn more 
and more the value of the penny, that coin once so 
bitterly scorned in all the West. We are to work out 
the problems bequeathed humanity with the passing 
years ; and in the end we are to ask, as we ask to-day, 
that unanswered question. Why? Policies and politics 
can not change these things. The wheels have run 
too far. Let fall the little words of our talking men; 



*In this connection the census map offers an unfailing interest. 
Investigation shows that our star, denoting the center of popula- 
tion, has traveled in all only 525 miles since 1790, the greatest 
west-bound gains being in the decade 1850-60, 81 miles. At no 
time has the center of population moved back toward the East, 
though it is nearer to doing so now than ever before— proof that 
the history of America has been but the history of a West, and 
also proof that that wayward West may soon bend its footsteps 
homeward after a century of adventure. The record of the move- 
ment of the population center is as follows: 

1790, 23 miles east of Baltimore, Maryland; 1800, 18 miles west 
of Baltimore, Maryland; 1810, 40 miles northwest by west of Wash- 
ington, D. C; 1820, 16 miles north of Woodstock, Virginia; 1830, 
19 miles west-southwest of Moorefield, West Virginia; 1840, 16 
miles south of Clarksburg, West V^irginia; 1850, 23 miles southeast 
of Parkersburg, West Virginia; 1860, 20 miles south of Chillicothe, 
Ohio; 1870, 48 miles east by north of Cincinnati, Ohio; 1880, 8 
miles west by south of Cincinnati, Ohio; 1890, 20 miles east of 
Columbus, Indiana; 1900, 7 miles north of Columbus, Indiana. 



ACROSS THE WATERS 377 

let wave tlie tiny swords of those wlio are called our 
warriors; and let the writers rage. Back and beyond 
their trivial and transient deeds runs the broad, 
somber flood of fate. Humanity, not political di- 
visions, is the concern of time. The individual yields 
to the section, the section to the nation, the nation 
to the world, the world to the plans of fate, of 
Providence. 

There is another, a lighter and more cheerful side 
to the conclusions that we may draw from our 
study of the way in which the West was made — ^the 
side that has to do with the growth of the newer 
portions of this country in all the liberal arts, in that 
noble flowering ol the human imagination, which is 
most naturally to be expected of an environment of 
ease and a time of leisure. Art rests ever upon the 
material, the imagination dates ever back to actual 
deeds. The gentler days of the West are no better 
than its ruder times, but the one is as good as the 
other, since each came in its proper period. It was 
the railway that developed the West in artistic 
things as well as in material things. It was as long 
ago as 1870 that a Western man. Justice Paine of 
the Wisconsin Supreme Court, found occasion to 
speak of the vast influence of these civilizing agen- 
cies. He said: 

"They have done more to develop the wealth and 



378 TTTE WAY TO THE WEST 

resources, to stimulate tlie industry, reward the la- 
bor, and promote the general comfort and prosperity 
of the country than any other, perhaps than all 
other mere physical causes combined. There is 
probably not a man, woman or child whose interest 
or comfort has not been in some degree subserved by 
them. They bring to our doors the productions of 
the earth. They enable us to anticipate and pro- 
tract the seasons. They enable the inhabitants of 
each clime to enjoy the pleasures and luxuries of all. 
They scatter the productions of the press and of 
literature broadcast through the country with amaz- 
ing rapidity. There is scarcely a want, wish, or 
aspiration of the human heart that they do not in 
some measure help to gratify. They promote the 
pleasures of social life and of friendship; they bring 
the skilled physician swiftly from a distance to attend 
the sick and the wounded, and enable the absent 
friend to be present at the bedside of the dying. 
They have more than realized the fabulous concep- 
tion of the Eastern imagination, which pictured the 
genii as transporting inhabited palaces through the 
air. They take a train of inhabited palaces from 
the Atlantic coast, and with marvelous swiftness de- 
posit it on the shores that are washed by the Pacific 
sea. In war they transport the armies and supplies 
of the government with the greatest celerity, and 



ACROSS THE WATERS 379 

carry forward, as it were on the wings of the wind, 
relief and comfort to those who are stretched bleed- 
ing and wounded on the field of battle." 

He has not read well the history of his country, 
has not learned the intricate web of the commercial 
system of to-day, has surely not studied the develop- 
ments of the third age of American transportation, 
who can believe that there exists any longer any con- 
siderable difference between the most widely sepa- 
rated parts of America in matters of the gentler life. 
The publisher of a noble periodical controls an 
agency the influence of which is as valuable and as 
much desired in the West as in the East, and which 
is felt as quickly and as sensitively in the one region 
as the other. The art and literature of the time 
belong to the West as much as to the East, and in its 
due time the West will produce as well as consume 
in the matters of art and literature. There were 
Western artists. Western painters. Western sculptors 
on the plains before the buffalo were gone. 

It is a matter of wonder that any American litera- 
ture could ever speak of the America^_^Wgst in any- 
thing but termsjDfjDride and honor. There is a cer- 
tain literature, color-crammed, superficial, and tran- 
sient, because wrong, that affects to believe that 
there is still a West that is a land of crude souls 
exclusively and of little hope for a hereafter. If the 



380 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

good folk who so believe lack the great privilege of 
actual American travel, they have at least left for 
them the resources of an American railroad map. 
Let them study; and even if they study no deeper 
than the map, they must come to see that the West 
is no more as once it was. 

Changed nnspeakahly and utterly, the old West 
lies in ruins. To pick about among those ruins may, 
indeed, be to find here and there a bit of local color; 
but were it not better to reflect that this color may 
be only the broken bits of a cathedral pane? Re- 
store that cathedral, in recollection, in imagination 
at least, if it be within the skill of art or literature to 
do so. Restore it, and write upon its arch the 
thought that history may be more than a mere re- 
cital of wars and religions; that the destruction of 
human life may be nationally not so great as the de- 
velopment of human character. Give the men of the 
old West, parents of the men of the new West, this 
epitaph: They had character. Let the heroes have 
place of honor in their own cathedral; and so 
may the Western earth lie light above them, and 
the Western skies smile over them rememberingly. 



ACEOSS THE PACIFIC 

CHAPTEE I 

THE lEON TRAILS 

At the time of the discovery of gold in California, 
there had been built up a splendid Western popula- 
tion, hardy, self-confident, able to shift for itself, 
wholly distinct from that population that it had for 
a generation left behind at the old starting places of 
the trails. These trails across the continent, waver- 
ing, tortuous, yet practicable, had been fully estab- 
lished. So far as might be within the horizon of 
those days, all was now ready for the epoch-making 
event that was to change all the methods of Amer- 
ica, that was to make Westerners by wholesale and 
to draw them swiftly from every comer of the 
earth. 

The great state of California alone was cause 
and sufficient reason for the swift development of 
the remoter American West. There can not be de- 
nied the tremendous effect produced by the sudden 

growth of California, coming as it did hard on 
381 



38^ THE WAY TO THE WEST 

the time of the annexation of Texas and the widen- 
ing of our national territory in the far Southwest. 
As to the discovery of gold and the swift growth of 
California being unmixed benefits, there may 
exist at this later day something of a sober doubt. 

California marked the beginning of the feverish, 
insane, excitable type of American, who wishes to 
do everything at once — and does it! Without Cali- 
fornia and the Civil War we should to-day still be 
settling the West. With California we are settling 
the islands of the Orient. The high-geared life of 
to-day is part of the corollary of washing a year's 
income out of the ground in an hour's work, of 
crossing the continent in a week instead of a season, 
of tearing down mountains by machinery instead of 
building up homesteads deliberately. Stimulation 
and destruction do not go so far apart. California 
gave to the world the spectacle of a nation drunk 
with energy, using with maddened zeal for a time 
powers made three-fold, employing an imagination 
under whose concept naught under Heaven seemed 
impossible — or was impossible! 

This was revolution. There was a demand for 
revolution of an even pace in all lines of al- 
lied industry. It was time for the railroad, 
and the railroad must now perforce come 
swiftly. We built better steamships to get 



THE IRON TRAILS 383 

out into our new, feverish, golden West. We used 
the old trails, but they would no longer serve. We 
employed the old mountain passes, the old grazing 
and watering places, but neither would these serve. 
No time now for hoof or wheel, or for the way of 
the ship upon the sea! No time now for the way- 
side ranches along the Platte, for the old posts of 
Laramie and Bridger and Hall! The golden coun- 
try clamored all too strongly. Therefore, with a 
leap, the old trails straightened out and shortened. 
New passes over the Great Divide were found. The 
long thin line of rails connected the East with a 
West now swiftly grown mightier than itself. All 
American morals and manners underwent swift re- 
construction. The United States, plus California, 
plus the Western railways, became a different na- 
tion. 

It is not necessary to take up in detail the chron- 
ological or geographical study of the building 
of the transcontinental railways. They have done 
their work. The commercial history of Amer- 
ica is sufficiently well written to-day on the face 
of every country of the globe. We have built our 
own railroads, and to-day we build and sell rail- 
roads and equipment for the Himalayas and the 
Sudan. We shall build the railroads that will 
make Africa another America. We shall build the 



384 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

railroads that will at length hring the Anglo-Saxon 
face to face with the Slav, in that struggle that shall 
pit the American West against the Russian East. 

The West of the midway district between the Mis- 
souri and Pacific was largely settled by reflex. The 
mines of California spilled back men, great, splen- 
did mien, to the eastward again, to exploit all those 
ranges of the Eockies whose wealth the trappers had 
not suspected. Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Nevada 
— ^all these might be called a part of the scheme of 
California. New and splendid empires were found- 
ed, new standards of civilization were erected in the 
recent wilderness. The grand and alluring story of 
the West went on apace for yet a little time. 

But these times were not to endure. There came 
swiftly the Western rush of population, which swept 
off the map the free lands of all our Western empire. 
The vast American public, mad with the lust of land, 
raped the Indian reservations from those that had 
frail title given them in the honor of a great nation; 
so that thus one more bar was broken between the 
East and the West. Home-building, farm-making 
man came close on the heels of trapper and trader 
and nomad cattle driver. The hordes of the land 
seekers held their lotteries even in the desert once 
dreaded by the travelers of the old Santa Fe trail. 
Incipient cities were builded in that waterless waste 



THE IRON TRAILS 385 

where Jedediah Smith, the first transcontinental 
traveler, lost his life in mid-continent. Never a bit 
of open land was left in all the West; or if there 
were such land remaining, it was of a quality that 
would once have been viewed with contempt. 

The story of the swift changes wrought by the 
iron trails is such as not to afford complete satis- 
faction in the contemplation; yet we may calmly re- 
view the different stages of that story. First we 
had the day of competitive railway building, when 
there were not enough railroads for the demands of 
a vast and unsettled region whose resources ap- 
pealed to a population. Then we came rapidly to 
the time of too many railroads; of attempts to adjust 
an unprofitable competition; of combinations, of 
arrangements, agreements, mergers; and of popular 
and governmental action upon such mergers. To-day 
all America is districted and divided among a 
few great railway systems. Once we were better 
than our transportation; now we are not so good. 
Once we depended upon it; now it rules us almost 
without argument. The swiftness with which these 
tremendous changes have been brought about fur- 
nishes one of the most remarkable phenomena re- 
corded in the history of the world. 

Recently there was erected at Doylestown, Pennsyl- 
vania, a monument to a forgotten man, John Fitch;, 



386 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

who in the year 1785 was known as one curious in ex- 
periments with steam as a motive power. Fitch built 
a steamboat, and had visions of man}^ things in the 
way of steam locomotion. Tlie life of this unknown 
man marks the extent of our backward vision in 
these matters; yet Fitch lived little more than a 
century ago. Indeed, the growth of the railroads 
of America has taken place in less than three-quar- 
ters of a century. And yet to-day we have more 
than two hundred thousand miles of railway, and as 
each day rolls by, we build from ten to twenty-five 
miles more. Eailroading is a profession perfected in 
the hard evolution of American necessity. Our first 
railways were but attempts, guesses, desires, hopes, 
purely local propositions and not always well con- 
ceived as such. Yet they grew and multiplied, and 
presently, before we had time to think, they had 
multiplied over much. Then came the days of the 
railroad receiver. After the receiver there came the 
combiner. This man, in these bubble days of so- 
called prosperity, for a time undertakes to do what 
competition was not able to do. It is only for a time 
that any man or combination of men can escape the 
workings of the great natural law of competition. 
Neither monopolies nor trades-unions, neither the 
"trust" in capital nor the "trust" in labor can for- 



THE IRON TRAILS 387 

ever evade it. In time there will again be change; 
and meantime, ruin. 

To-day there are five great centralizations or com- 
binations of capital that control the railway situa- 
tion in America. In these swift times of change these 
arrangements may not long remain permanent, and 
it is bootless to mention them specifically. The build- 
ing of these thousands of miles of railway and the 
assembling of them together under industrial truce 
has been the product of a giant game in commence, a 
commerce not to be confined wholly by the limits of 
this continent. The great ships built for the Orient 
are now an old story, an accepted enterprise that 
spells Europe on the one hand and Asia on 
the other. 

As for our own marches, Alaska is to repeat at 
least in part the story of California. The Yukon 
and White Pass Railway is but a hint, a be- 
ginning. It is now upon the question of a railway 
from Circle City in Alaska to the Bering Sea, to 
connect there with a railway which shall eventually 
tap both China and Siberia! It is entirely within 
possibility that we shall in time see a continuous 
railway transportation from the Atlantic to the far- 
off straits, that separate this country from Asia. 
Scientists tell us that over these straits there per- 
haps came once the ancestors of the aboriginal pop- 



388 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

ulation of this continent. This population we 
have destroyed. There will also be destroyed all 
those nomad tribes of northeastern Asia that seem 
not useful in this great scheme whieh we call ciyil- 
ization. Alaska was long thought uninviting; yet 
railroad building there is feasible^ and Alaska is 
feasible as residence for man; and railroad man is 
concerned with every corner of this globe that can 
serve as residence for human beings. 

In the course of an address during the year 1901, 
a modern railway man* spoke in part as follows: 
*^The twentieth century has been ushered into exist- 
ence, and at its very dawn we find a struggle, not 
for the acquisition of new territory, not for the 
subjection of foreign countries, not a crusade to 
introduce a new and better religion, but a struggle 
between the great nations of the earth for suprem- 
acy in industrial pursuits and to supply the mar- 
kets of the world. The nineteenth century has fre- 
quently been referred to as the Age of Transporta- 
tion. Distribution is the handmaid of production. 
Bacon said: 'There are three things that make a 
country great: fertile fields, busy workshops, easy 
conveyance for men and goods from place to place.' 
The evolution that has taken place in the transpor- 
tation of this country during the nineteenth century 

*Mr. Paul Morton, of the Santa F4 Kallroad. 



THE IRON TRAILS 389 

has been remarkable and unparalleled in tbe bistory 
of man. In tbe year 1800 it cost one bundred dol- 
lars to move a ton of wbeat from Buffalo to I^ew 
York. Tbe regular rate is now a dollar and a balf 
per ton, and it bas been carried for a dollar. One 
hundred years ago we paid twenty-five cents per mile, 
traveling by stage-coach, without baggage; now we 
carry home-seekers from the East into California 
for approximately one-twentieth of the old rate. 

'^Our American railroads were, not a very long 
time since, owned largely outside the United States, 
but during the world's panic that occurred in 1893, 
our British, German and Dutch friends discovered 
the necessity of selling something, and the o.nly 
things in their strong boxes that they could sell 
without too much sacrifice were their American se- 
curities. They dumped them on the American 
market; and, notwithstanding the financial strain 
and the depression from which we were suffering, 
our American financiers mustered pluck, courage 
and money enough to buy them. They were bought 
at bargain prices. The advance in them has been 
stupendous, but it is worth a great deal to feel that 
we are not only blessed with the most improved and 
cheapest transportation in the world, but that our 
railroads are owned by our own people. The value 
of the railroads of the United States amounts to 



390 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

over one-fifth of the total wealth of the country." 
Another master in transportation,* in a public 
address delivered in 1902, gave yet further details 
in the vivid story of the extension of the iron trails 
of America: ^^While the railroads may have to an- 
swer for many mistakes of judgment or of intent," 
gaid he, "on the whole the result has been to create 
the most effective, useful, and by far the cheapest 
system of land transportation in the world. In 
England the average amount paid by the shipper 
for moving a ton of freight one hundred miles is 
two dollars and thirty-five cents ; in France, two dol- 
lars and ten cents; in Austria, a dollar and ninety 
cents; in Germany, where most of the railroads are 
owned and operated by the government, a dollar and 
eighty-four cents; in Eussiai, also under government 
ownership, where the shipments are carried under 
conditions more nearly similar to our own than any 
other country as respects long haul, a dollar and 
seventy cents. In the United States the average cost 
is seventy-three cents, or less than forty per cent, of 
the average cost in Europe." 

From the above comparisons this captain of trans- 
portation concludes that the railroad industries of 
this country are in a flourishing condition and that 
they should not be interfered with. Yet he con- 



'Mr. James J. Hill, of the Great Northern Ilailrow<3. 



THE IRON TRAILS 391 

eludes his comment with words that contain a 
corollary inconsistent with liis earlier attitude, as 
we may later have occasion to note. He says: ^Tor 
the first time in the history of this country thou- 
sands of our farmers are seeking liomes in the Cana- 
dian Northwest, owing to the cheap lands offered in 
that country, and to the difficulty of securing such 
lands in tlie United States." Earlier in the same 
address there is this epigrammatic statement: "Land 
without population is a wilderness; population with- 
out land is a mob." If our Western Americans are 
leaving the flag of a republican government to seek 
land elsewhere, is not the inference fair that they 
do so because they have become a population with- 
out land? If this he true, assuredly it is the work 
of the iron trails. 

We have an overgrowth, or, rather, too sudden 
and rank a growth, of transportation in America. It 
is attended with sudden changes, attended also with 
a certain weediness and inmaturity, which we should 
be entitled to call un-American and undesirable, 
even were it not for the graver features that amount 
to revolutionary changes and to national menaces. 
Borne aloft upon a great wave of commercial pros- 
perity, the American people is at the present time 
taking itself with entire seriousness as the greatest 
nation of the world. Its rapid industrial expansion 



392 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

has indeed been cause for marvel in the mind of all 
the world. There is a certain national comfort in 
these reflections, without doubt, and solace in the 
almost incomprehensible totals of the figures on 
which such assertions are grounded. Therefore it 
must come almost with ill grace to offer in these 
daj's of jubilation any word that might seem to 
indicate that perhaps, in spite of all this superficial 
prosperity, all may not be well with America as a 
nation, that all is not really well with our American 
man. 

We are told that these are good times, the best 
we ever knew. It is triumphantly announced to us 
that we have in one year invested nearly seventy 
millions of dollars in foreign securities, largely in 
railroad bonds of Russia, in German Treasury bills, 
and English Exchequer loans. This is very good; 
it sounds well. As an offset to it one should apolo- 
gize for oft'ering the simple but multifold statements 
from the columns of the daily press bearing upon 
the greater cost of living in Western states. It ia 
seven per cent, greater, says one dealer in statistics. 
It is twenty-five per cent, greater than it ever was, 
says another. The housewives of America, the best of 
all statisticians, say that in 1902 it cost thirty-three 
per cent, more to live than it did in 1899. These prices 
of bare commodities in these days of super-excellent 



THE IRON TRAILS 393 

transportation go well toward comparing with those 
•we have shown as existing in the far-off moim- 
tain communities in the days of pack-horse and ox- 
team transportation. If this be so, is all well with 
America? The prices are the results of combina- 
tions and monopolies. The monopolies are based 
largely on non-competitive transportation. The 
iron trails are built over the hearthfires of America. 
The iron trails must do otherwise than thus. 

We are informed that during the last year the 
balance of trade in favor of the United States was 
something like seven hundred millions of dollars. 
"Figures up to March twenty-first (1902), just fin- 
ished/' says a careful report, "are so stupendous as 
to be staggering. * * * Nations have generally 
measured their prosperity by their foreign trade." 

There might perhaps be other ways of measuring 
that prosperity. As against the above imposing ag- 
gregation of figures, I offer a simple newspaper para- 
graph printed in 1902, which sounds like Kaskaskia, 
or Alder Gulch, or the end of the Santa Fe Trail: 
"Potatoes have been selling for a dollar and seventy- 
five cents a bushel in Chicago this week," says the 
item. "A year ago the price was about forty cents. 
This enormous advance, coupled with the correspond- 
ing rise in the prices of nearly all vegetables, presents 
a serious economic problem for large families with 



394 THE WAY TO THE WHST 

small incomes." The same paper goes on to say : "'TliO 
greatest sufferers from the high price of potatoes are 
the small wage-earners. They have learned to depend 
upon potatoes almost as much as upon bread. Yet, at 
a dollar and seventy-five cents a l)ushel, this staple 
food is out of the reach of many. The best thing 
they can do is to fall back on rice, which is 
an excellent substitute for potatoes and is still 
reasonable in price. Unfortunately, large numbers 
of wage-earners are incapable of making a sudd on 
change in their diet. Many women that have 
depended upon potatoes all their lives do not 
know how to cook rice or hominy. They are as 
helpless with these substitutes as were many of the 
Irish people with the com m'eal that was sent to 
them from America during the potato famine, or as 
Hindus, who are accustomed to rice, would be when 
they were given wheat flour to cook. This scarcity of 
potatoes is likely to cause a good deal of hardship 
before the proper use of the cheaper staples is 
learned." 

And this is in America, in the zenith of the Age 
of Transportation! I fancy my man of pack-horse 
and cordelle living upon rice! I fancy Daniel 
Boone or Davy Crockett or Kit Carson using such 
diet as backing for his deeds! Meat and com 
are the diet that built America. Good leaders of 



THE IRON TRAILS 395 

America, insist not over-much on this rice fare, 
as you do at present in these bubble days. Let 
weediness and " immaturity, imported overmuch, 
be overrun and oppressed by organized rapacity, 
and then, one day, good leaders, you shall see 
the American man even yet fall to his well-learned 
task of leading himself. 

This is in America, and in the Age of Transpor- 
tation! I read of these startling changes and can 
scarcely believe that they have happened within a 
lifetime, a part of which was passed in a West where 
wealth and poverty, arrogance and self-denial, were 
alike unknown; where, if one hungered, he was free 
to enter the door of any little cabin he found here 
or there in the mountains, and to eat freely of what- 
ever food he found, though the owner of the abode 
himself might be absent and might forever remain 
unknown; where the thought of price did not enter 
into the mind of either the uninvited visitor or his 
unknown host; where herds, wild or tame, covered 
a country vast, inviting and hospitable; where each 
man was his own leader; and where the thought of 
any difficulty in the simple problem of making a 
living never entered into the heart of man ! 

Those were days perhaps of not so great and ap- 
parent a national prosperity, but there comes a catch 
in the throat at comparing those days with these. The 



396 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

horror of it, the shameless waste, the destruction, 
the change, the ruin of it all — these can leave us 
little comfort as we gaze on the glittering picture 
of to-day. As a nation we are building for ourselves 
higher and higher a false castle of prosperity, blow- 
ing for ourselves wider and wider a bubble fragile 
at heart as any that ever met collapse in another 
day. "Give me back my legions !^^ cried the Eoman 
general. God grant there may never bitterly rise 
to the lips of an American leader the unavailing cry, 
"Give me back my Americans!" God grant there 
come not too late the cry, "Give us back our 
America !" 

"Taking it all around," says an unprejudiced 
writer, "the present generation in the United States 
reminds one of a young spendthrift just come into a 
fine property, accumulated by the thrift and careful- 
ness of many ancestors. He thinks he is something 
^ out of the ordinary, and intends showing others how 
i things should be done. In the society of flatterers, 
I speculators and gamblers, he soon parts with his 
/ ready money and bank stock. He then sells the tim- 
ber off his land. After that is spent he sells his live 
stock. Having thus deprived himself of the means 
for the proper tillage of his soil, he then sells the 
hay crop from his meadows until they are no longer 
productive. He ne^t mortgages his property; and 



THE IRON TRAILS 397 

the last scene in the final act is the auctioneer's 
hammer at the public vendue."* 

Another commentatorf takes up the same trend 
of thought: "The cry of the people of the West," 
says he, "is rising almost to the ominous threat of 
revolution. The wealth of the country has increased 
enormously, but it is becoming concentrated in the 
hands of a comparatively few individuals. Only in 
the days of the early empire and late republic of 
Rome was it possible for a few individuals in a few 
years to amass such enormous fortunes as they do. 
Having exploited the wealth of the great middle 
class, we are now drifting into the second stage. 
Small investments no longer pay. There is no East- 
ern or Western state that has not a score of stranded 
towns and villages once prosperous in small indus- 
tries. The small farmer is no longer able to make 
a living in the competition which he meets. . . . 
All this may be progress, but it is progress over a 
precipice." 

Still another observer! carries his conclusions yet 
further, and in a public address states: "The work 
of such men as [this monopolist] and his associates 
of the big combinations is preparing the minds of our 



*Wm. F. Flynn, in "Forest and Stream." 

tProf. Benjamin F. Terry, of the University of Chicago. 

$Rev. George C. Lorimer. 



398 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

peo^Dle for socialism. I am not in favor of socialism, 
but men like these so-called captains of industry, 
who are opposed to socialism, are preparing the way 
for the rapid spread of the socialistic idea. Should 
some able leader take up that idea and advocate it, 
we shall see it spread with tremendous rapidity in 
America." 

So much for the accomplishments of the Age of 
Transportation. It has already shown us the mean- 
ing of monopoly and has shown us the abolishment 
of the individual. It has taught us, or some of us, 
to believe that the establishment of an expensive 
university may serve as emendative of an unpop- 
ular personal career. It has taught us, or some 
of us, obsequiously to worship that form of wealth 
that soothes its conscience by the building of pub- 
lic libraries. Whether or not learning best grows 
and flourishes that has such foundation heads, library 
and university alike must to-day admit their im- 
potence to answer the cry of the leader, "Give me 
back my Americans !" 

The America of to-day is an America utterly and 
absolutely changed from the principles whereon 
our original America was founded, and where- 
from it grew and flourished. Xever was there 
any comer of Europe, before the days of those 
revolutions that put down kings, worse than some 



THE IRON TRAILS 399 

parts of oppressed America to-day. It is not 
too late for revolution in America. There is not 
justice in the belief that America can to-day be 
called the land of the free. The individual is no 
more. He perished somewhere on those heights 
we have seen him laboriously ascending, some- 
where on those long rivers we have seen him 
tracing. He died in the day of Across the Waters. 
To-day we have labor unions, organizations that 
in the old West would have called forth indignant 
contempt in the mere suggestion. We have asso- 
ciations of managers to fight the unions; we have 
monopolies, combinations, masses, upon the one 
eide and the other, contending, not working together 
harmoniously. We have become ]p<ir excellence the 
people of castes and grades and classes. The whole 
theory of America was that here there was hope for 
the individual ; that here he might grow, might pre- 
vail. It is degradation to abandon that theory. It 
is degradation for the American man to say of his 
ovra volition : "I am but one cog of a wheel, and my 
neighbor another. I can not change ; I can not rise ; 
I can not progress ; I can not grow ; I dare not hope." 
The degradation of the industry shares the degrada- 
tion of the individual. The joint degradation, if it 
be accepted as final, spells a national deterioration 
and a national ruin which may be gradual and slow, 



400 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

or may, in these swift-moving days, be rapid and 
cataclysmic in its nature. 

We have departed from the careful intent of 
that government which originally abolished for 
us even the law of primogeniture, a clause adopted 
in the state constitutions nearly throughout the 
Union. Our general public is more absolutely 
ruled by a few than is the case in any portion 
of the earth. Offsetting this, we boast of our '^pros- 
perity"! Let those that like call this a national 
prosperity. It is national fate, but there may be 
those that do not care to call it by the name 
of prosperity. Times are good when all the people 
are busy. Most of the people in the South were 
busy before the war; we called that slavery. It 
was as nothing compared to the industrial slavery 
impending over the American people to-day. It was 
simple by comparison as a problem. Tremendous 
indeed is the problem this implies, and grave and 
serious indeed should he be who attempts to solve it. 
We need statesmen, not politicians, to-day. We need 
men willing to do their duty in office, without regard 
to the question of their re-election to office. 

We have promised that our study of American 
transportation should bring us close to the heart of 
things in our national life. The promise may be 
made good in the review of the work of the iron 



THE IRON TRAILS 401 

trails in the Age of Transportation. It would be 
but raving to hold the captains of transportation 
alone responsible for the deplorable changes that 
are taking place in America and the American char- 
acter; yet only an equal folly could deny that too 
little fearless statesmanship, combined with too 
much politics and too much ungoverned transporta- 
tion, has been responsible for many of these changes. 
Any candid student of American transportation and 
of American politics will find himself irresistibly 
arriving at the great question of the unrestricted 
American immigration. 

We Americans have claimed this continent for 
humanity. We say that America is not to be used 
by the Old World as colonization ground, or for the 
planting ground of Old World ideas of government; 
and yet, even as we speak these words, we vitiate 
doctrine even wider than the Monroe doctrine — the 
doctrine of common sense. We throw open the gates 
of America and invite the sodden hordes of worth- 
less peasantry to flock hither and pillage this coun- 
try, the choicest of the continent, without let or 
hindrance, without requiring of them the first stand- 
ard of fitness for American citizenship; without ask- 
ing of them even the slightest educational test as 
to their fitness to enter into and enjoy a part of 



402 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

the once splendid heritage of this American people. 
The only price we ask is a ticket and a vote. 

Of a truth, there would be justice in saying that we 
would better watch not so much South America as 
Castle Garden. There is where much of the degrada- 
tion and depression of American life is going on. 
There is where trades-unionism begins^ and indeed 
must begin. There is where monopolies begin. There 
is where, indeed, we are being colonized by the Euro- 
pean peoples. For those that come here to 
work, to study, to learn and to grow there 
may be room yet in this great America. 
For those that come here to exist as para- 
sites there should be no longer any room. All this 
is to some extent the act of common carriers in 
search of commerce. Behind this search there often 
lies all too certainly the intent of importation of a 
passive and semi-servile class,* content to accept the 



*Since the above lines were written the following editorial 
comment appeared in a leading American daily newspaper: 

"Almost every nation in the world is sending an increasing 
number of immigrants to the United States. Last month (April, 
1903) the new-comers numbered 126,200, being 30,000 more than 
for April of 1902. The total for the year may reach 1,000,000, or 
half the population of Chicago, the second largest city in the 
country. 

"Is so great an influx of foreigners natural or desirable? 
Many in a condition to know say that immigration is promoted 
largely by mine-owners and railroad managers, who wish to be 
kept supplied with cheap labor, and who do not care particularly 
whence it comes or whether it will be desirable material out of 
which to make American citizens, or whether its presence may 
not contribute to social or industrial disorder. 

"Many of the great railroad systems approve of unrestricted 



THE IROiSr TRAILS 403 

hardest conditions of life, and content to accept life 
barren of all hope, of all chance for future better- 
ment. 

Such life is un-American. Every one of these 
foreigners comes here with a vote in his hand. 
We have long allowed the vote to pay for every- 
thing; and, seeing that he had a vote, the poor for- 
eigner though turbulent and discontented, has per- 
force satisfied himself with an America not much 



Immigration because it swells their profitable emigrant business. 
They have their agents in Europe soliciting that kind of business. 
The greater the number of men and women that can be induced 
to come to this country and to buy tickets to interior points, the 
more money the roads make. They offer low ocean and rail rates, 
which tempt the emigrant and yet are profitable to the roads. 

"While some great employers favor unrestricted immigration 
because it gives them cheap labor, the labor unions may reach 
the conclusion that tor that very reason unrestricted immigra- 
tion must be harmful to their interests, because it will lead 
Inevitably to a reduction of wages. W^hen the supply of labor 
is much in excess of the demand the maintenance of a high 
wage scale becomes impossible. 

"While a large percentage of the immigration is unskilled 
labor, it must be remembered that many unions are composed of 
men who do that kind of labor. Moreover, some of them will 
learn trades and increase the number of skilled workers. When 
times grow dull there will be an excess of workers and wages 
will go down. The labor organizations belonging to the American 
Federation of Labor asked the last Congress to bar out illiterate 
immigrants. The object was to keep down the undesirable cheap 
labor immigration. The steamship companies, which make money 
off their steerage passengers and drum up business throughout 
eastern Europe, and some western railroads which are extending 
their lines, protested against and defeated the legislation 'organ- 
ized labor' petitioned for. Considering the swelling tide of 
Immigration, much of it of an undesirable nature, the labor 
leaders probably will ask the next Congress in emphatic lan- 
guage to order the exclusion of illiterates to protect American 
labor and the high standard of American citizenship." 



404 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

better and not much different from Europe. As- 
Buredly, tlie time will come, and perhaps presently, 
when there must he considered with all seriousness 
this question of a mis-chosen and wrongfully used 
factor in our commercial fabric. It is not the upper 
branches of our model system of commerce which 
are wrong, nor will pruning those upper branches 
set that wrong right. We must go to the root of 
things. 

Surely we have gone forward far enough in our 
commercial growth to learn that our country is not 
exhaustless. Were it so we should not to-day be con- 
sidering the expenditure of hundreds of millions of 
dollars to stretch the shrunken acreage of the once 
boundless West. Once we had enough for all, but now 
we no longer have enough for all. Once we could 
keep open house, but we can now no longer do so. 
There comes a time even in the question of open 
house when the doctrine of self preservation, greater 
than any Monroe doctrine, greater than any consti- 
tution, must have its place. 

We, as well as Great Britain and other world powers, 
must eventually come to the doctrine of selfishness. 
Great Britain herself, a land not offering the induce- 
ments held out by America to the penniless settler, 
seriously contemplates the restriction of immigra- 
tion along the severest lines. She fears becoming 



THE IRON TRAILS 405 

the great almshouse of Europe. Shall we in her 
stead become the great almshouse of the world? It 
is suggested by a foreign-born philanthropist, for in- 
stance, that America should forthwith throw open 
her doors to the five millions of persecuted Russian 
Jews. English authorities cheerfully believe that 
America could easily assimilate this great mass of 
new population. There are many American captains 
of politics and captains of transportation who would 
cheerfully agree in throwing this task of assimilation 
upon this country; but this attitude can not long 
remain indorsed by fearless men and thoughtful men 
unsodden in the mire of modern American politics, 
or unsmirched in the grime of headlong and heed- 
less American commerce. 

Under all this discussion and all these generaliza- 
tions there lies, of course, the great, human, indi- 
vidual question. Back of all stands that great, pa- 
thetic figure, the man about whose neck fate has 
hung the destiny of a wife and children. Once there 
was room in America for that man. Once there was 
hope and a chance ultimately to be called his own. It 
is this man, this simple, common, plain American cit- 
izen who is to-day most vitally concerned. The man 
we have with us, the man of America, who has helped 
win and make America, is the one that ought to be 



406 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

protected by America, rather than the one that still 
has root in the Old World soil that bore him. 

This is selfishness ; but it is the only plan that offers 
hope to humanity in either world. The glory, the 
pride of America, the beauty and the flowering of her 
growth, have root in her splendid heritage, the heri- 
tage of a virile character born of a magnificent 
environment; but there exists no heritage which may 
not be dissipated, there lives no blood forever proof 
against continuous vitiation. 

"The American people," says the governor of a 
Western state, ^Vill no more submit to commercial 
despotism than they would to governmental des- 
potism, and the tendency in the one case can be, 
and will be, as easily thwarted as the tendency in 
the other." Let us leave to an impartial and intelli- 
gent judgment of readers the question whether or 
not there exists or threatens to exist in America a 
commercial despotism; whether or not there exists 
any American people ; whether or not we have, in the 
foregoing pages, found any causes for the changes 
and tendencies toward change that are to-day un- 
mistakable phenomena — changes so rapid and ele- 
mental that any true American ought to be ashamed 
to say, "I belong without thought to this, that or the 
other political party." Perhaps we shall be all the 
better fortified with premises if we delve a trifle 



THE IRON" TRAILS 407 

deeper into the statistics of this question of foreign 
immigration; for any writer deals better in unde- 
niable premises than in ready-made conclusions. 

The tables compiled by the United States Com- 
missioner of Labor are conclusive. At the begin- 
ning of the Revolutionary War four-fifths of tlie 
American population could claim English as their 
native tongue. To-day not half our population can 
make such claim. There is interest in the story of 
the statistics. 

^The number of immigrants coming into this 
country between 1820 and June thirtieth, 1900, was 
nineteen million one hundred and fifteen thousand 
two hundred and twenty-one. Prior to 1820 the gov- 
ernment did not take account of immigration, but the 
generally accepted estimate of the total immigration 
between the adoption of the Constitution and 1820 
is but two hundred and fifty thousand. This num- 
ber is not included in the above total. 

"The character of the immigration has changed 
in a most interesting way. From 1821 to 1850, two 
and three-tenths per cent, of our immigration came 
from Canada and Newfoundland; during the next 
decade, 1851 to 1860, the percentage was the same, 
and during the last decade only one-tenth per cent, of 
ihe immigrants was from those sections. From 1821 
to 1850, twenty-four and two-tenths per cent, camo 



408 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

from Germany, and in the next decade thirty-six and 
six-tenth per cent., this being the highest percentage 
reached by the Germans. During the last decade 
the Germans supplied only thirteen and seven-tenths 
per cent, of our foreign immigration. During the 
period first named, 1821 to 1850, Great Britain fur- 
nished fifteen per cent, of the immigrants, and in the 
next decade sixteen and three-tenths per cent. Then 
came a large increase from Great Britain between 
1861 and 1870, the percentage being twenty-six and 
two-tenths; from 1871 to 1880 it was nineteen and 
five-tenths, while for the last decade it was but seven 
and four-tenths. From 1821 to 1850 Ireland fur- 
nished forty-two and three-tenths per cent, of our im- 
migrants, and between 1851 and 1860 thirty-five and 
two-tenths per cent. Since then there has been a 
rapid decrease, and between 1891 and 1900 Ireland 
furnished but ten and five-tenths per cent, of our 
immigrants. Those from Norway and Sweden con- 
stituted only six-tenths per cent, between 1821 and 
1850. The Scandinavians increased in numbers be- 
tween 1881 and 1890, when their proportion was ten 
and eight-tenths per cent. ; during the last decade it 
was eight and seven-tenths per cent. 

"The immigration from the whole group just 
named, Canada and Newfoundland, Germany, Great 
Britain, Ireland, and Norway and Sweden, shows a 



THE IRON TRAILS 409 

marked relative decrease. While tlie immigrants 
from these countries constituted seventy-four and 
three-tenths per cent, of the whole number of immi- 
grants during the entire period under discussion, 
they furnished between 1821 and 1850 eighty-four 
and four-tenths per cent, of the total, and during the 
next decade ninety-one and two-tenths per cent., since 
which time there has been a rapid decrease, this 
group of countries during the last decade furnishing 
but forty and four-tenths per cent. 

"These figures enable us to bring into direct and 
sharp comparison the immigration from countries 
that fifty years ago furnished hardly any incre- 
ment to our population. From 1851 to 1860 Aus- 
tria-Hungary sent no immigrants to this country, or 
not enough to make any impression upon the statis- 
tics, but between 1861 and 1870 the immigration 
from that country was four-tenths per cent., during 
the next decade two and six-tenths per cent, from 
1881 to 1890 six and seven-tenths per cent., while 
during the last decade it was sixteen and one-tenth 
per cent. 

"Italy, beginning with two-tenths per cent, during 
the period from 1821 to 1850, increased to two per 
cent, between 1871 and 1880, and to nearly six per 
cent, during the next decade, while during the last 



410 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

decade that country furnished seventeen and seven- 
tenths per cent, of our total number. 

"The proportions for Kussia and Poland are almost 
identical with those of Italy. Those two countries, 
taken together, beginning with only one-tenth per 
cent, of our total number of immigrants between 1821 
and 1850, increased but slightly until between 1881 
and 1890, when they contributed five per cent., and 
during the last decade sixteen and three-tenths per 
cent. These three sections — ^Austria-Hungary, Italy, 
and Eussia and Poland — taken together, contributed 
during the last decade fifty and one-tenth per cent, of 
our immigrants, as against forty and four-tenths per 
cent., as stated, for the group of five countries first 
named ; nine and five-tenths per cent, came from else- 
where. 

"It is interesting to know how many of the nine- 
teen million one hundred fifteen thousand two hun- 
dred and twenty-one immigrants coming to this coun- 
try since 1821 are now living. The recent census, 
by its classification of population into native and for- 
eign born, answers the question, and we find that of 
the total number of immigrants fifty-four and seven- 
tenths per cent, were living in June, 1900. In 1880 
sixty-two per cent, of the whole number of immi- 
grants at that date were living, while in 1850 forty- 
four and four-tenths per cent, were still in existence. 



THE IRON TRAILS 411 

... Tlie conclusion unfortunately is un- 
avoidable/' says the statistician, "that our immigra- 
tion is constantly increasing in illiteracy, and the im- 
migrants themselves are showing higher percentage 
of illiteracy. Nearly one-half of our steerage immi- 
gration now presents an illiteracy of from forty to 
over fifty per cent. Of the three hundred eighty- 
eight thousand nine hundred and thirty-one steerage 
aliens who arrived during the year, the following 
totals are given for the principal countries" : 

Males. Females. 

Southern Italian 86,929 24,396 

Polish 25,466 12,170 

Hebrew 23,343 19,894 

German 17,238 12,442 

Slavic 19,309 7,622 

Northern Italian 16,202 4,158 

Scandinavian 12,200 9,981 

And fifty per cent, of them are illiterate ! Shall we 
let them come? Shall we perhaps teach them to eat 
rice with the rest of us? Shall we divide our in- 
heritance with them? Shall we remember only that 
each of them has a vote? The leveling methods of 
the Age of Transportation, the day of the iron 
trails, have made possible, and have made impera- 
tive, these very questions. Their answer lies in the 
future, yet perhaps no very distant future. There 



412 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

are not lacking those, and they constantly increase in 
numbers, who believe that the answer must be the 
putting up of the bars against all future immigration 
except of a closely selected sort, and preferably that 
bred upon this continent. America has eaten 
overmuch; she may yet assimilate, but she must 
gorge no more. We can now rear actual Ameri- 
cans enough to feed the world, and to defeat the 
world when the time shall come for the fatal shock 
of arms, and under a system of rest and recuperation 
we may become a united and strong America; while 
under the system of the past, and the system that now 
prevails, we must presently become a warring and 
divided, hence a weakening, land. 



CHAPTER II 

THE PATHWAYS OF THE FUTURE 

The open and abounding West is no more. From 
California, from all the interior regions of the great 
dry plains rises the same cry, that the government 
should take measures to give the people more land; 
that by means of irrigation it should restore, in some 
measure at least, the opportunities which allured 
the men who in the old days followed in the pilgrim- 
age "out West." This changed and restricted region 
has problems entirely different from those of the 
West that was. 

Once we wished a population to embrace the oppor- 
tunities that abounded in the West. Now we wish 
to increase the opportunities for a population clamor- 
ing for a better chance than is offered anywhere in 
America. It is demanded that the government shall 
bring about reclamation of the arid lands, and their 
actual settlement in small tracts. "The political party 
that shall boldly advocate a great national irrigation 
appropriation will receive the support of millions of 
people, now homeless and discontented, who desire 

homes and an opportunity to make a living by hon- 
413 



414 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

est labor." This is the statement of a master in 
transportation, who has assisted in the importation of 
hundreds of thousands of these homeless and dis- 
contented people into an America too suddenly 
gone small. He would scarcely care to see our rail- 
roads under government control, but he can suggest 
a method by which the government could be im- 
mensely helpful to the Western people, and perhaps 
to the Western railroads! 

In yet another prominent railroad office, the con- 
versation lately turned upon the future of the car- 
rying trade in the West, when another of these cap- 
tains of transportation swept his hand in a large 
circle on a map that hung on the wall. Within 
his circle was included a good portion of Montana 
and Wyoming, with other parts of the great Western 
interior. "All this region must go under irriga- 
tion," said he. "It is worthless to-day for farming 
purposes, but there exists no richer soil when once 
you get water on it. There is no county or state 
government, there is not even the richest railroad 
corporation, that can afford to put this vast acreage 
under the ditch. It is a problem for the national 
government of the United States; and, mark my 
words, that government will one day be obliged to 
solve that problem. Of course, the interest of our 
railroad in the matter is purely a business one. 



PATHWAYS OF THE FUTURE 415 

AYe want this country settled up, not "by a few scat- 
tered grazers, but by many producing farmers. We 
want this country filled full of small land holders, 
not that we may carry their products to the East on 
our railway, but so that we may carry them west 
to the Pacific, and thence across the ocean to the 
Asiatic market. There must be a new West, and for 
that West the market must be found in Asia." 

The common carriers, therefore, tell us that our 
West is now beyond the Pacific; that the East has 
come into the West; that the Old World has come 
into the New; that the Latin methods of farming 
must supplant the Anglo-Saxon ways. Perhaps; but 
this will take some time. As against the likelihood 
of any early and sweeping national action in the mat- 
ter, there remains chiefly the vis inertice of mental 
habit in the American farmer, who hitherto has not 
been acquainted with the doctrine of irrigation and 
reclamation. Vast tracts of California, Colorado, 
New Mexico, Arizona, Texas — large regions in what 
w^as once considered the irreclaimable desert of 
America, go to show that the Western-American can 
learn irrigation and can successfully carry on farm- 
ing of that nature ; but none the less, for the average 
American farmer, who has been accustomed to the 
wide-handed methods of his forefathers, this propo- 
eition will carry no immediate appeal. 



416 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

The proof of this latter statement lies in that 
very emigration into Canada to which attention has 
been called, and which constitutes one of the most 
remarkable phenomena ever known in the history 
of the American West. These dwellers under the 
Stars and Stripes, these citizens of the land of the 
free, of the land supposed to offer the greatest ex- 
tent of human opportunity to-day, are flocking across 
her borders with the purpose of establishing homes 
in an alien land, and under a flag from which in a 
century gone by they made deliberate and forcible de- 
sertion ! 

They want the cheap lands, the wide acres, the 
great horizon of a AYest, even if they must find that 
West in land other than that which bore them ! 
They do not want irrigated land that is worth one 
hundred dollars an acre, even though there be an 
unchanging and pleasant climate as an attraction 
thereto. They prefer a cold, bleak environment, a 
rude, hard life, with poorer markets, a looser touch 
with civilization, but with a bolder, a wider and freer 
individual horizon. There has been nothing in our 
history more pathetic than this. There has been 
nothing more cheerlessly disheartening in our his- 
tory than the thought that we are exchanging thou- 
sands of men of this bold and rugged type, men 
who are willing and able to go out into the savage 



PATHWAYS OF THE FUTUEE 417 

wilderness and lay it under tribute, for an equal 
number of thousands of shiftless and unambitious 
incoming population, who are willing to live on the 
droppings of the American table. 

As to the extent of this American emigration 
northward into Canada, the figures are great enough 
to cause consternation in the mind of more than one 
railroad man, and to set on foot all possible meas- 
ures of checking the outgoing stream. Within the 
year 1902 more than fifty thousand American citi- 
zens, some say seventy-five, even a hundred thousand, 
are thought to have taken up homes on the soil of 
Canada. These American emigrants took with them 
twenty million dollars out of the banks of Iowa alone. 
Great syndicates, in part made up of American capi- 
talists and in conjunction with American and Cana- 
dian masters of transportation, have undertaken the 
settlement of large tracts of these cheap Canadian 
lands. 

The settlers of the remoter West, the men from 
Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and so forth, largely 
move into Manitoba or other western British prov- 
inces. Farther to the east, in what is known as 
New Ontario under the new railroad industrial policy, 
an equally determined effort is making to influence 
Am.erican citizens to settle on lands subject to the 
rigorous climate north of I^ake Superior. If only 



^18 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

the settler shall come here he may have land at any 
price he likes, on terms of payment that shall suit 
himself. In all the large Canadian cities, whether 
under government countenance or not, there are 
emigration bureaus. In the cities of St. Paul and 
Minneapolis there are yet other emigration offices, 
proclaiming as flamboyantly as they ever did for 
the lands of the United States, the attractions of a 
home in the far Northwest, across the borders of 
the United States. 

Canada lost one-fifth of her population to the 
United States. She is regaining much of it to-day, 
because she still has a West, and we have none. There 
is systematic, deliberate and highly differentiated 
effort goiAg on toward the influencing of this Ameri- 
can emigration. To offset it we have nothing to offer 
except the incoming stream of city dwellers from 
Europe, and the possible policy of national irrigation, 
subject always to the dubious methods of American 
politics. Gaze now once more, if you like, on the pic- 
ture of the old West and of the new ! 

England fears, and in some portions of Canada 
that fear is shared, that these Americans will not be- 
come good Canadian subjects; that, in short, Canada 
will become Americanized. Only the years will tell. 
These great popular movements are matters of indi- 
vidual self-interest. The day of the individual is 



PATHWAYS OF THE FUTURE 419 

indeed passing, yet it is not to pass without a fight 
to the last gasp upon the part of that individual 
himself. It would lie ill to suggest that the Ameri- 
can government has not ahvays properly treated its 
people, in spite of that vast modern meshwork of 
monopolies and combinations which has brought 
about practically an industrial slavery, and has 
gone so far toward bidding our once free American 
to hope for freedom no more. Yet the answer as to 
the patriotism of the American people lies silent 
before us in the records of the ticket offices of these 
railways that run from America into Canada. 

In a view of the past American transportation 
methods, and of that natural Monroe doctrine whose 
basis lies in the abundant natural richness of the 
environment of the American temperate zone, it is 
no unbiased prophecy to suggest that this question 
will eventually be settled, not by the government of 
the United States, not by the government of Eng- 
land, not by the government of Canada, but by the 
people themselves. If the transportation of the fu- 
ture shall make Canada and the United States alike, 
then assuredly the people will attend to the rest, and 
care not what may be the politics or the government 
of either the one land or the other. The eventual 
settlement of the West may mean a country in which 
there shall be small distinction between Canada and 
the United States, small distinction between the lat- 



420 THE WAY TO THE WEST . 

ter and the more desirable parts of the republic of 
Mexico on the south. If these questions shall be 
settled in Washington or Ottawa, it is safe prophecy 
to believe that it will be in the railroad offices and 
not the governmental offices of those respective cit- 
ies. It takes more than politics to suppress the in- 
stinct that seeks individual well being. It takes 
more than politics to prevent water from running 
down-hill. 

The reply to such prophecy or foreboding, or 
guessing, as one may choose to call it, which has 
been provided by the government of England, is not 
apt to take any form different from the ancient 
policy of England, which after all is military. Eng- 
land is old and is, or presently will be, decadent. 
Her bigotry is that of age, her unprogressive slow- 
ness of change is senile. She has been the great 
colonizer; and in so far as the development of trans- 
portation facilities has brought her colonies closer 
home to her, it has given England hope — ^her only 
hope — that of existing in the future of her 
robust children. Yet we find the concern of Eng- 
land to-day to be that of securing military touch with 
all the corners of the world, rather than that of estab- 
lishing a flexible and durable system of transporta- 
tion methods that shall make for the individual 
well-being of all her widely scattered subjects. 



PATHWAYS OF THE FUTUEE 421 

England, concerned with this American invasion of 
settlers, is to-day planning a great trans-Canadian 
road, whose western head shall lie somewhere within 
striking distance of Asia. "This/' says one com- 
mentator, "is England's answer to Enssia and the 
trans-Siberian railway." To a humble observer it 
might seem far safer were England concerned, not so 
much in answering Eussia, as in answering the 
United States. 

The best answer to Eussia would be multitudes of 
farms in Western Canada, which one day we may 
call Western America. She can make that answer 
only by learning the methods of the United States. 
Till in some measure she shall have done so, she can 
not be safe as against the inroads of th"e American 
citizens. She can not restore the level of the waters 
by the building of railroads with military reasons 
under them. There may be a time in the history of 
the North American mid-continent when Canada and 
the United States will agree that it is better to get 
along comfortably together than it is to aid a far-off 
and somewhat mythical government to fight its battles 
somewhere at the end of military roads. 

Our little Western secessionists, our little fron- 
tier republics cleaved to the government at Washing- 
ton as soon as the pathways thereto made stuch loy- 
:."y a possible thing. It is nearer from Quebec and 



A2Z THE WAY TO THE WEST 

Ottawa to Washington than it is to London. Pa- 
triotism is much a matter of transportation. The 
faster the ocean steamships, the hetter the tele- 
graphic communication, the nearer Canada is to Eng- 
land; yet at the same time relatively she grows still 
nearer to the United States.* 

Germane to these questions are those that rise 
as to the opening of additional avenues of industry 
at the other end of those pathways that stretch 
out across the Pacific Ocean. In the mad race for 
the gates of the imperial city of China, America 
had no real friends at her side. That was the time 
when the covetous powers of Europe, owners of 
lands overpopulated and industries overcrowded, 
conceived that they had at length opportunity to 

♦Canada does not lack a fearless view in some of these matters. 
In 1902 a prominent journal of Halifax, N. S., boldly compared 
British and American institutions: "Had our forefathers thrown 
in their lot with the other American colonies at the time of the 
Revolution," says this journal editorially, "Nova Scotia would 
now be a greater Massachusetts. The Dominion of Canada would 
have five-fold its wealth and population." Per contra, American 
emigrants face some facts which to-day are not wholly satisfactory. 
Taxation in Canada in 1901 was $10 per capita, and but $7.50 per 
capita in the United States. To-day the debt of the Dominion is 
$66 per capita, whereas that of the United States figures but $14.52. 
In proportion to population, Canada has twice as much foreign 
trade as the United States; yet much of her foreign trade is with 
the United States. The Dominion of Canada clings still to the 
mother country, but in these modern days, the lines between states 
and provinces and governments become annually more faint. Life 
bases itself upon the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. The 
interdependence of a mutual self Interest makes the strongest 
bonds between peoples, between governments, or between govern- 
ment and people. 



PATHWAYS OF THE FUTUEE 423 

urge quarrel on a weaker land, with the result of 
a war in which the weaker power would inevitably 
be obliged to pay the penalty of unsuccessful resort 
to arms. England and Germany wished to do what 
England had been doing in South Africa and else- 
where for some time. They wanted a quarrel and 
a war, therefore a dismemberment and a division. 
Water transportation is cheap. The coal and iron 
of China lie close to water transportation. It had 
excellently well served the designs of England and 
Germany to parcel out this land, so full of raw 
material fit for manufacturing purposes. It had 
excellently well suited the powers to wipe the bar- 
barians off the map, as has been done in so many 
South Asiatic and South African transactions of a 
similar nature. The secret of the Christian indigna- 
tion at the barbarity of the heathen Chinese is none 
too much a secret in the frank vision of comjnercial 
desire. 

The part of America in this game was well played. 
It is too late now to cry out for an America 
for Americans. We have squandered our substance, 
wasted our heritage, played the spendthrift royally 
as we might. IN'ow it is too late. We may shut our 
gates on the East, but we must some time take our 
part in the great game of going abroad in the West. 
We have not yet felt that time to be near at hand; 



424 THE WAY TO THE WESO] 

but it was splendid statesmanship on the part of 
America that kept China intact for yet a while, and 
got the armies off her soil. 

The blandishments of England and Germany 
ought not to appeal to America. There is no nation 
that loves us unselfishly, or that would aid us unsel- 
fishly were we in need of help ;* but if it shall one day 
come to the last bitter game among the nations, 
there will be none then so well equipped as we. We 
shall not need to call for aid. An English journal 
deems it '"^crude vulgarity" for the United States 
to think of wresting the maritime supremacy from 
Great Britain. It may be such, though we are not 
sure. It was perhaps crude vulgarity when we took 
America from Great Britain, when we took for our- 
selves a country so full of natural wealth, a country 
so perfect for the upbuilding of an aggressive and 
self-reliant national character. It might be crude 
vulgarity if we took this whole American continent 
as our own. Let us hope that this same character may 
still abide with us when we find need for the farther 
crude vulgarity of going abroad into the world. That 
we are meantime going abroad is without question 
true ; not at the direction of our "leaders," not by rea- 



♦Unless it might perhaps be the republic, France, from whom 
YiQ took the difficult dgctrine that all men are "free an(3 equal," 



PATHWAYS OF THE FUTURE 425 

son of our politics, but by reason of our transporta- 
tion. 

The South, always the leader into the West, ex- 
claims politically against the look toward Asia. It 
is but polities. The Tennessee troops fought well in 
the Philippines. Not all the world can stop us from 
thus going abroad. Whether we shall come home 
again at a later date remains yet to be seen. Whether 
we shall then have left a home worth the name re- 
mains yet to be proved. 

Such are some of the localities and situations into 
which our trails have nationally led us; such 
some of the problems into which our vaunted 
Age of Transportation is carrying us. There 
are new equations, new questions, new prob- 
lems constantly confronting us with an ever 
growing urgency. It is not in any wise certain 
that a dispassionate study of this nature can leave 
us with a national vanity wholly untouched. It is 
not altogether sure that the conclusions framed upon 
our chosen premises, inevitable as they are, can leave 
the student wholly convinced of either our universal 
success or our universal happiness. 

Yet we shall do best to dismiss forebodings, and 
to cling, as still we may, to the faith and hope 
that was part of the American birthright. In- 
deed, we find it difficult to study even our grim col- 



420 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

umns of figures, our unimaginative records of events, 
without still retaining the curious and awesome feel- 
ing that heretofore the settlement of the American 
West, the birth and growth of the American man, 
has been a matter of fate, of destiny. There seemed 
to be a mighty westt-bound tide of humanity of which 
we were but spectators, if indeed we were not part 
of the tide's burden of hurried flotsam, carried for- 
ward without plan or aim or purpose. 

We go on apparently still without plan, apparently 
still borne forward in a throng resistless as of yore. 
Perhaps in the forefront of our ranks we carry trump 
of Jericho for other lands; if not in the bugle note 
of our armies, at least in the humming of our com- 
merce. Let us hope that we do not invite a trumpet 
call at our own walls. 

A million dead men are forgotten. Our wars 
are as nothing. But a million live men, taken up 
bodily from one environment, and set down bodily 
in another environment in any antipodal quarter 
of the world — that means history; that spells ques- 
tions in forethought; that bids rise an American 
statesmanship big and honest, not selfish, not cor- 
rupt, and not afraid! These questions are such as 
must be approached wholly without reference to 
party or to politics. 

It has been hitherto in America not so much a 



PATHWxlYS OF THE FUTURE 427 

question of politics as of roads; but now the roads 
are builded that s-hall lead us to our City of De- 
sire or to our Castle of Despair. Steam will estab- 
lish our doctrines and our tariffs. But steam has no 
soul. To it, our flap-hatted frontiersman, our new- 
American, our product of a noble and unparalleled 
evolution, is but the same as the wrinkled-booted 
foreigner that puts down his black box in the mid- 
dle of a Dakota prairie or in the heart of a crowded 
Eastern city. Steam has no care for the real glory 
of our flag. It cares naught for character. It does 
not love hum>anity. In it dwells no ancient love for 
the history of an America which at least might once 
have been dear to the heart of all humanity. Steam 
is an equalizer. It breaks down the lines between 
nations. It makes America like unto Europe, caus- 
ing us to change to meet the changes of the Old 
World. If we be not careful we shall see going for- 
ward that equalizing of humanity that is brutaliz- 
ing. And then in the good time of the ages we 
shall see cataclysm, revolution, change. 

Whatever the product of that change after the 
revolutions that are yet to be, no man of all the 
future will ever again behold a land like that 
American West which is now no more. That was 
indeed a land rich in the bounty of nature, rich 
in opportunity for humanitv. It was a land where 



428 THE WAY TO THE WEST 

a man could indeed be a man ; where indeed he might 
live honestlj^ and cleanly and nobly, unshrinking 
from his fate, unfearing for his own survival, help- 
ful to his neighbor, independent as to himself. 

Now we have seen our old rider going far, our 
flap-hatted man, the fearless one. He has strange 
company to-day, at home and abroad. In all rever- 
ence, let us hope that God may prosper him! In 
all reverence, let us hope that there may never arise 
from the great and understanding soul of any leader 
of this country that sad and bitter cry, ^''Give me 
back my Americans!" 



GENERAL INDEX 



Abbott, J. S. C. : 158, 162-3, 224, 236. 

Abenakis: 22. 

Adams, Josiah: opinion on admission of Louisiana as a 

state, 61-2. 
Alabama: few whites there in 1800, 46; part included in 

Free State of Franklin, 125. 
Alamo, The: no messengers of defeat, 149; Travis hemmed 

in, 177; battle of, 179. 
''Alamo baby" : 180. 
Alarcon: 328. 
Alaska: 387. 

Alexander, Colonel : defeats Crockett for Congress, 165. 
Alleghany mountains: barrier formed by, 48. 
America: her debt to her early explorers, 74; population 

of, 221 ; gets her territory first, 372 ; potentially most 

powerful of all world powers, 375; utterly changed 

from original America, 398; a look into the future, 

424-428. 
American, The: his birth, 103. 
American frontiersmen : dress of, 18. 
American Fur Company : first steamboat, 188 ; gets posts of 

Northwest Company, 197; beginning of, 329. 
Appalachians: first trails were waterways, 39. 
Archer, of YiTginia: 177. 
Arinijo, Governor: 242. 
Armstrong, Lieutenant-Governor: 169. 
Asenesipia: 69, 124. 
Ashley, General: goes up the Platte, 294; takes cannon 

through South Pass, 328; undertakes exploration of 

Green River, 336-7. 
Astor, John Jacob : 289 ; expedition to Astoria, 329-333. 
Astoria: 329. 

Atchison, Topeka & Santa F^ Railroad : 270. 
Austin, Stephen A. : 173. 
Austin: 177. 
Austria-B-ungary : emigration to the United States, 409- 

410. 
Ax J The American : description and uses, 7-10. 

(429) 



430 GENERAL INDEX 



Bacon, quotation from : 388. 

Baird, J. M. : 268. 

Baird, McKnight & Chambers : 268-271. 

Baker and Company, I. G. : 210. 

Balance oitr2i^Q: 893. 

BaUimore: 45, 168. 

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Co. organized : 349. 

Bank examiner: distance traveled by one, 208. 

Batts, Thomas: 101. 

Beale, Lieutenant: 250. 

Bear, black : 163. 

Beaver, skin : price of, 190. 

BeckneU, William : 270-272. 

Bee Hunter, The: 176, 181. 

Benton, Thomas : 300. 

Benton, Fort: 209. 

Bering Sea: 387. 

Berkeley, Bishop: 38. 

Bicknell, William : 270. 

Big Men: America rich in, 126-7. 

Birch-h2kr\i : absence of in Montana, 197. 

Birch-bark canoe : description of, 19-24. 

Blackfeet, The : 341-2. 

Blue Ridge mountains: barrier formed by, 48. 

Boarding: cost of in the West, 215. 

Boat, The American : description of, 19-24. 

i?o6. Col. R. E. : foot-note, 164. 

Bodley, Thomas : 79. 

Bonneville, Captain: 312-315, 329. 

Boone, Daniel : 45 ; leaves Society of Friends, 77 ; moves 
from Bucks county, 77-8; brothers-in-law, 79; mar- 
riage, 80; called Luther of frontiering, 88; personal- 
ity, 89-90; personal description, 91-94; birth, 94; sec- 
ond marriage, 95 ; with Braddock as a wagoner, 96 ; 
determines to explore Kentucky, 98 ; where is his 
fame as an explorer, 102 ; departure from the Yadkin 
settlement for the West, 103 ; left alone in the wilder- 
ness, 105; moves family to Kentucky, 107; under- 
takes discovery of surveyors, 107-8 ; lays out road from 
the Holston to the Kentucky, 108; knowledge of wood- 
craft, 109 ; capture of his daughter by the Indians, 1 10 ; 
captured by Indians and taken to Detroit, 111; life 
saved by Kenton, 114-15; adventure with two Indians, 
115-16; leaves Kentucky, 116; granted a commission 
by Spanish governor of Louisiana, 117; land taken 
from him by the government, 117 ; date of death, 118; 
his late years, 118-19; his body and that of his wife 



OENERAL INDEX 431 



moved to Kentucky, 120; compared with Davy Crock- 
ett, 145-6. 

Boone, Squire : 104 ; famil}^ moves to Kentucky, 106 ; 
death, 113. 

Booneshorongh: 42, 99; founding of, 108; saved by Boone, 
111-112. 

Bore, in rifle : 13. 

Boime, James : 177. 

Braddock: 96. 

Brandyidne, battle of: 82. 

Brant, Mohawk chief : 48. 

Bread Yioi: 216-218. 

Bridger, Fort: 295-6. 

Bridger, Jim : 295-6. 

Britain, ancient: 36. 

Broadwater, Colonel Charles A. : 210. 

Bryan, James : 79. 

Bryan, Morgan : 79-80. 

Bryan, Rebecca: 80, 95. 

Bryan, William: 79. 

j5r^rt??«'.s Station, fight at: 113. 

Buchanan, Mrs. Sally : 56. 

/:?«e>m Ventura : 243. 

BiifaJoes: first seen by Boone, 103. 

''Bullboats'\- 197. 

Bullitt's Lick: 65. 

Burro: price of, 203. 

''Caches'' of Baird and Chambers: 269. 

Cahokia: 45. 

Calico: price of, 190. 

California: discovery of gold in, 200; density of population 

in 1870, 220; discovery of gold, and its effect on the 

West, 381-385. 
Callison, Susannah : 82. 
Calloicay iamUj : 110. 
Canada: emigration to, and cause, 391; emigration to the 

United States 1821-1850, 407 ; emigration to, 416-418 ; 

will it be Americanized, 418-422. 
CanaZ, Washington's: 67. 
Canon of the Colorado : 231, 328. 
Canot du Maitre: 23. 
Canot du Nord: 22, 195, 197. 
Caravan trade : its extent, 281 ; goods carried, 282; carried 

on by Southern-Western men, 282. 
Cardenas: 328. 
Carolina: 47; rallying ground for adventures, 88. 



432 GENERAL INDEX 



Carolina, North : its relations with the Washington Dis- 
trict, 128 ; annexes Watauga, 131 ; gives Washington 
District to the United States, 132; repeals act of ces- 
sion of Washington District, 133; appoints oflBcers for 
state of Franklin, 137. 

Carson, Kit: grandson of Daniel Boone, 120; birth, 223; 
description, 225; dress and equipment, 227; greatest of 
American travelers, 228 ; dispute concerning birth place, 
228; boyhood days, 229; wanderings from 1826 to 1834, 
229-238; first marriage, 239; hunter for Bent's Fort, 
1834-1842, 239-240; guide for first Fremont expedition, 
241; second marriage, 242; guide for second Fremont 
expedition, 242-245 ; guide for Fremont a third time, 
247-9; messenger to Washington three times, 249, 250, 
251; appointed lieutenant in the U. S. A., 251; expe- 
dition with eighteen old friends, 254; sheep drive to 
California, 255; Indian agent and counselor, 257; 
death, 258. 

Carter, John : 128. 

Gastrillon: Mexican general, 180. 

Caucasian population: largest is that of America, 374. 

Cavalier: 37, 53, 75. 

Censns: second of the U. S., 45. 

Center of i)opulation in 1860: 220. 

Central Pacific Railroad : 209. 

Chambers, Baird and McKnight: 268-271. 

Champlain: 265. 

Cherokees: 54; League with Spain, 59. 

Cherronesus: 69, 124. 

Chicago: a city of transportation, 364. 

Chicasas: 140. 

China: struggle of the nations for its commerce, 422-424. 

Chittenden: 337. 

Choctaios: 140. 

Chouteau: 266, 338. 

Church: first in the West, 126. 

Civil government: first written compact of, 130. 

Civil War, The: causes and results, 354. 

Clark: 71, 287. 

Cleveland: founded, 70. 

Cleveland, Moses: 70. 

Coahnila: 174. 

Coal oil: price of, 214. 

Coas^ Indians: 331. 

Cocke, General William : 134. 

College: first in the West, 126. 

Colorado, Grand Canon of: 231, 328. 

Colter, John : 335. 



GENERAL INDEX 433 



Commerce, Western : 191. 

'' Commerce of the Prairies, The" : 268. 

Commercial West: its beginning, 65-6. 

Congress: sells land to Ohio Land Company, 41; proposes 
to sell vacant lands, 132; does not recognize independ- 
ence of Franklin, 137. 

Ooureurs dn bois: 194. 

Coole, WilHam: 103. 

Cooley, William: 103. 

Cooper, Braxton : 271. 

Cooper, Fennimore: 45. 

Corn: price of in early days, 189. 

Coronado: 339. 

Cost of living : greater to-day than in 1899, 392. 

Courts: follow swiftly into Kentucky, 112. 

Crittenden: orator at Boone's burial in Kentucky, 120. 

Creek War: 154. 

Crockett, Davy : 145 ; compared with Boone, 145-146 ; his 
rapid change after going to Congress, 147; birth, 149; 
leaves home, 151; works for his freedom, 152; goes to 
school, 153; marriage, 153; moves tow^ard the West, 
153-4 ; serves in the Creek War, 154-5 ; wife dies and 
he marries a second time, 156 ; elected to the legisla- 
ture, 157 ; moves to the Mississippi, 157 ; electioneering 
stories, 159-163; skill as a bear hunter, 163-4; defeated 
by Alexander for Congress, 165; elected to Congress, 
166; changes from bear hunter to politician, 166-7; 
opposes Jackson, 167 ; motto, 167 ; makes a trip through 
the North and East, 168-9; result of northern trip, 
169; open animosity toward Jackson, 170; his expe- 
rience with the political machine, 171-2; determines 
to move to Texas, 172; "autobiography," 175; route 
of journey to Texas, 176; accuses Houston, 178; death, 
180; alleged diary, 181. 

Crockett, John: 150; opens a tavern, 151. 

Crooks: 333. 

Cutler, Manasseh: 41. 

Cutthroat: sign for, 195. 

Danger of a stage trip: 213. 

''Dark and Bloody Ground," The: 114. 

Davis, Cushman K. : 361. 

Day: 333. 

Dechard: 13. 

Dechert: 13. 

De Munn: 266. 

Dequelo, The : 179. 

Detroit: 111. 



434 GEXERAL INDEX 



Development of the West: influenced by difficult route of \ 

entry, 49-50. I 

'' Diamond hMcW: 205. 

*^ Diamond R" Transportation Company, The: 210. 
Difficulties of Western travel: 212. 
Doan, Reverend Samuel: 131. 
Dogs: use of in packing, 196. 
Donelson, Rachel : 55. 
Doylestown, Pennsylvania: 385. 
Drake, Joseph : 100. 
Dress of American frontiersmen: 18. 
''Z>/'i>m^ the nail" : 16, 
Dugout, The : 23. 

^«s^, The: occupies Western territory the South opens, 

189. 
Easterner, The : his idea of the Westerner, 67. 
Ely, Warren S. ; 76. 

Emigration to Canada: cause, 391, 416-418. 
Empire, Westward the course of, takes its way : 38. 
England: 61, 72; transfers trading posts to tJnited States, 

196; fears Canada will be Americanized, 418-422; 

answer to Russia, 421 ; wished division of China, 423. 
Europe: must combat the West, 373. \ 

Expansion, geographical : how it proceeds, 4^ 
Explorations by men of Kentucky and Tennessee: 43-44. 

Fannin: 177. 

Fare, from Atchison to Helena: 214. 

Farms: not wanted West of the Mississippi, 193. 

''Father of the Santa F^ trail" : 272. 

Fergusons, The: 79. 

Finley, Alexander: 79. 

i^iwZe?/, Archibald: 79. 

Finley, Henry: 79. j 

Finley, John: 79, 81 ; president of Log College, 85; traded 

with Indians on Red River, 99; on the Ohio River, ; 

101 ; goes West with Boone, 103. 
Finley familv, members of: 79. ; 

Fitch, John:" 385-6. 
Fitzpatrick, noted fur trader : 233. 

Flack, Ann (Baxter) : 81. ' 

Flack, Benjamin: 82. i 

Flack, James : 81 . \ 

Flack, William: birth, 81; marriage, 82. '■ 

Flack, W. W.: 81. \ 

Flat-boat: its use carried men away from the East, 66, ij 

Flour, price of: 215, ^ 

■i 



GENERAL INDEX 431 



Forbes, John Murray: 368. 

f^^nc'e- ^ii% 'Jedes trading posts to England, 196. 

I^^r^^rt Kentucky: Boon! erects palisades near present 
- site of, 108; Boone buried here, 120. 

Frankland: 134. 

i/^ran^Zm, Benjamin: 134. ^ ^i= loi f; • ipaf,! fpnder 

Franklin, Free State of: beginnings o^j.^^^-f ' l!^^^,J®^^^^ 
in 135; salaries of officers, 136; clings to standards of 
Nirth Carolina, 136 ; ceases to exist, 138 ; looked south- 
ward for an alliance, 139. 

^:^^^:^^^^ in Europe and America, 

Fremont: 224; first expedition 241; second expedite 
242-245; hunts a more direct trail to California, 247 J, 
last expedition, 257-8 ; shall he share honors with Car- 
son, 312. 

Fremont, .lessie Benton : 251. 

French, The: 47-8; expedition of 1735, 101. 

Fr^f"^^ ^Jestion of gradually solves itself, 
Froltiertman, American : outline of his westward progress, 

i.«r tmde: its home in the West 194 ; end of 200; end of 
the beginning of a new day, foot-note, 2d«. 

"??'?/>• trade. The American" : 337. . 

Fx^-tralZ': find a way to the Eockies, 186; many .n the 
trans-Missouri before 1840, 339. 

G^arces, Father: 327. _ 

Qardoquoi: Spanish minister, 139, i4U. 

Sr-lew whiteTthtre in 1800,46; part inclnded in 
'''"Tree State of Franklin, 125; refuses t" ■ntertere n 

North Carolina-Franklin controversy, 137-8, sells a 

portion of its territory, 140. 

g::::;'.-^em\/ration from to the United States, 408; 

wished division of China, 423. 
Gibson House, Helena: 216. 
Gillespie, Lieutenant: 248. 
Girty: 113. 
Gist, Christopher: 98, 101. 

S •' d'^s'cfvery oi in California and its effect on the West, 
200, 381-383. 



436 GENERAL INDEX 



Governor of Louisiana: grants Daniel Boone a commission, 

117. 
Grape vine: use of by Daniel Boone, 106. 
G^reaf Britain : arms savages below the Great Lakes, 110; 

emigration to the United States, 408. 
Great Meadows : 96. 

Green Eiver: exploration of by Ashley and Henry, 336. 
Greenbacks: value of in the West, 214. 
(rreene, Jonathan H. : 176. 
Gregg, Josiah : 268, 275, 326. 

Hall, Fort: 289. 

Hall, John : 128. 

Hamilton: commandant of Detroit, 111. 

^^ Harrington'^ : 176. 

Harris, A.nn: 79. 

Harris, Hannah: 78. 

Harrod, James: 99. 

Harrodshnrg : 42, 99. 

Harvard College : 169. 

Hawkins, Joseph: 150. 

Helplessness of trapper without a horse : 28. 

Henderson, Colonel : 108. 

Henry, Fort: 332, 334. 

Henry, Major Andrew: builds Fort Henry, 334 ; undertakes 

exploration of Green River, 336. 
Hill, James J. : 390. 
^o7(Zen, Joseph : 103. 
Horse, The American: aid rendered "Western explorer, 

25-31. 
Horse stealing: a serious crime, 28. 
Houston, Sam: 174, 177. 
Howard, 3 o\n\: 101. 
Howe, Henry: 352. 
Hnger, Isaac: 140. 
Hunt: 333. 

Hunt, Wilson Price : 294. 
Hunter, John D. : 340. 
Hunter, Mary : 78. 
Hynds, Alexander: 130. 

Illinois Central Railroad : 369-371. 

Illinois, Governor ot: 189. 

Immigration: caused by Civil War, 356; its effect on the 
West, 357; an argument against unrestricted immigra- 
tion, 401-412 ; restriction contemplated by Great Brit- 
ain, 404; statistics for, 407-411. 

Independence: starting point of Santa F6 trail, 276. 



GENEEAL INDEX 437 



Indians: could not occupy trans-Alleghany ground, 49. 

Individual, The: losing his grip in America to-day, 399. 

Industrial revolution of the West : 355. 

Ingles, Mary Draper: 99. 

Inman: 270. 

Iroquois, The : trafficked with the English, 43 ; allied with 

New York, 47. 
Irrigation of the West : 413-416. 
Italy: emigration to the United States, 409, 410. 

Jackson, General Andrew : 55 ; serves in Creek War, 154 ; 

opposed by Crockett, 167 ; denounced by Crockett, 170; 

favors annexation of Texas, 178 ; opposed by Crockett 

because of veto for Maysville road, 183. 
Jamison, Eobert: 79. 
Jejfersow, Thomas : 68,300. 
Jews, Russian : 405. 
Johnson, General Albert Sidney : 298. 
Johnson, Sir William: Indian agent, 48; foot-note, 83. 
Jonesboro, meeting at: 133; courts held at by Franklin, 

137. 
Joy, James F. : 367. 

Kaskaskia: 45; visited by General Lafayette, 189. 

Kearney, General : 249. 

Keel-boat, The : 185. 

Kenton, Simon: 114. 

Kentucky: fights for a highway over the Appalachians, 41 ; 
occupied by dangerous Indian tribes, 43; outpost of 
civilization, 50; saved to the Union, 58; pioneers of, 
80; by whom settled, 88; explored by Sailing and 
Walker, 98; recapitulation of explorations, 100-101; 
separated from Virginia and set up as a state, 116; 
pays debt to Daniel Boone and his wife, 120; part in- 
cluded in Free State of Franklin, 125. 

Kentucky settlements : 58. 

Kephart, Horace: 44. 

Kin Cade: 230. 

Kincaid: 229. 

JSboienai trail, The : 341. 

Labor unions: 399. 

Lafayette, General: 189. 

Lafitte: 173. 

Lajeunesse, Basil : 241, 248. 

La Lande: 263. 

Langford, N. P. : 134, 140, 210. 

Laramie, Fort: 295, 



438 GENERAL INDEX 



Law: position of the West in regard to, 127-128. 

^^ Leather stocking Tales" : 45. 

Lederer, John : 101. 

Lee, Captain U. S. A. : 236. 

Lee's army : 215. 

Leio's, Meriwether: 76. 

Lewis and Clark: 71, 287. 

Linseed oil: price of in Montana, 214. 

Liza, Manuel: 335. 

Log College: 85. 

Long, Major: report of his Platte expedition, 193; seeks 

the Red River, 287. 
''Long Hunters": 100. 
Louis the Grand Monarch : 194. 
Louisiana: settled after Canada, 46; evils likely to arise 

from its incorporation into the Union, 63; dispute with 

Spain over Sabine as boundary of, 173. 
Louisiana Purchase: 60-61; significance of, 61. 
Luther, Martin: 88. 

McBride, James : 100. 

McComh, H.S.: 371. 

McGiiUough, John: 101. 

McGary fight: 113. 

McKee: 113. 

Mackenzie: 333. 

Mackinaw ho2ii^: 198. 

McKnight, John: 271. 

McKnight, Robert: 230. 

McKnight, Baird and Chambers: 268-271. 

McLaughlin, Doctor: 324. 

McLellan: 333. 

Malgres: 266. 

Mallet brothers, The : 263. 

Man, The West-bound American: 61. 

Mansco, Kasper: 99. 

Mansker, Kasper: 99. 

Maritime supremacy : struggle for, with Great Britain, 424. 

Markets of the world : a struggle for to-day, 388. 

Martin, Governor of North Carolina: 136-137. 

Martin Academy : 132. 

Maryland Ciindi: 348. 

Massachusetts: part played in the development of the 

West, 347. 
''Mayfloii^er,'' The: 42. 

Maxioell: establishes ranch with Carson, 253. 
Maysville road: bill for, 183. 
Merriwether: 267, 



I 



GENEEAL INDEX 439 



Metropotamia : 69. 

M'xican capital: in western trade, 274. 

Michiga7i,LQ.ke: 188. 

MiJitiaj The Pennsylvania: 96. 

Mills: improvement of rifle by, 13. 

Minneapolis : emigration offices in, 418. 

Mississippi: few whites there in 1800, 46. 

''Mississippi Territory" : 70. 

Mississippi River: why explored from the North, 46; con- 
trol of secured, 60; little understood by statesmen a 
hundred years ago, 61; as a boundary of civilization, 
68; a boundary of states in ''Ordinance of North- 
west," 68; descended by John McCullough, 101; first 
explorers, 73. 

Missouri: becomes outpost of civilization, 50; first steam- 
boat on, 188. 

Missouri Fur Company : 197. 

Monay, James : 103. 

Montana, routes to: 211. 

"Montana Post": 210. 

Mooney, J amea: 103. 

Morgan, Colonel George: foot-note, 82-83. 

Morgan, J. Pierpont: 369. 

Mormons, The : 296. 

Morrison, William: merchant of Kaskaskia, 2S2, 335. 

Morton, Paul : 388. 

Mother of the West : 40. 

Moultrie, Alexander: 140. 

Jfurj9 A?/ wagons: 211. 

Murray, John Dormer: 78. 

Napoleon Bonaparte: 61, 212. 

Nashville, Tennessee: settlement, 54-57 ; in touch with the 
Ohio River, 58. 

National road : 64, 183. 

Neeley, Alexander: 104. 

Neshaminy Church : 85. 

New Engla-'d: not the mother of the West, 39; realization 
of the West, 40; character of population compared to 
that of western Pennsylvania, 44; explanation of her 
part in discovery of the West, 44 ; chances in favor of 
it in western movement, 49 ; gives a cordial reception 
to Crockett, 169. 

Newfoundland: emigration to the United States, 407. 

New Madrid earthquakes : 157. 

New Orleans : easv to reach from Kentuckv, 58; visited by 
John McCullough, 101 ; the steamer, 187, 

"iVew Purchase" : 156, 



/;l 



440 GENEEAL INDEX 



Newspaper : first in the West, 126. 

New York, parent of the "West: 40; her policy toward the 
Indians, 47; spared by Six Nations, 47; influence with 
Indians due to Sir William Johnson, 48; gains lands 
from the Iroquois, 48; chances in favor of it in west- 
ward movement, 49. 

Nicollet: 265. 

North, The : occupies Western territory ; the South opens, 
189. 

North Carolina : men from, built Harrodsburg and Boones- 
borough, 42. 

Northern Pacific Railway, The: 365. 

Northwest, The: its rapid settlement to-day, 299, 

Northwest Company: extends posts along our Northern 
border, 196 ; rival of Hudson Bay Company, 329. 

Northivestern Company, The: 333. 

Northwest Territory, The : 124. 

Norway: emigration to the United States, 408. 

Occupation of the West: a study of transportation, 36. 
Ohio: receives first population from New England, 70. 
'*07i20 Land Company": 41. 
Ohio River: known in early days, 38; center of population 

on, 220. 
Ojihways: 22. 
''Old Betsy": 168. 
^'Ordinance of the Northwest" : 68. 
Oregon: density of population in 1870, 220; should extend 

to Alaska, 289-290. 
Oregon trail: greatest of all American roads, 262; early 

need for, 289; early makers, 291; its beginning, 293 ; 

early adventurers along, 294; a second stage begins, 

297; first agricultural invasion along, 298; distance 

and direction, 305-310. 
"Oreg^on Trail," Parkman's: 303. 
Osborn, William Henry : 368-372. 
Oxen: used as pack animals, 206. 

Pacific: first man to reach it by land trail, 318. 

Paa[/?c Fur Company : 197. 

Pacific railway : delayed by the Civil War, 354. 

Pack horse : 202. 

Paclcing, flexibility of charges for : 204. 

Paine, Justice of Wisconsin: 377. 

Panniers: 30. 

Park-man, Francis : 275, 300-304. 

Pastimes of frontiersmen : 16. 

Pathfinder, The Great : 224. 



GENERAL INDEX 441 



pawnees, The: wear Spanish medals, 338. 

Pax Jacksonii: 178. 

Felesipia: 69, 124. 

Fenn, William : 76. 

Pennsylvania: starting point of the westward roovement, 
13; chances against it in westward movement, 49; 
first trail from, 73; migrations from in last half of 
eighteenth century, 77. 

Peters, Doctor: 228. 

Petition of Robertson and Sevier's men : 59. 

Phenicia: 36. 

Philadelphia: 76, 168. 

Phillibert: 266-7. 

Physical strength: its importance in the West, 192. 

Piano taken to a mining camp: 204. 

Pike, Lieutenant Zebulon: marches to the Colorado, 71; 
theory of straight lines, 262; seeks headwaters of Red 
River, 264; opposed by the Spaniards, 266; selects 
route of Santa F6 trail, 270; mistakes Rio Grande for 
Red River, 287; journeys of, 337-339. 

Pioneers of Kentucky : 80. 

Pirate, The: 176, 181. 

Plains, Indians: 340. 

Piatt River: ancient road of the Indians, 293. 

Poland: emigration to the United States, 410. 

Polk, Colonel : 159. 

Population: center of in 1860, 220; of America, 221. 

Post, The: 215-216. 

Potatoes: price of in San Juan mining camp in 1875, 203; 
in Montana, 215 ; in Chicago in 1902, 393. 

Powell, Major: 336. 

Prices: high in the Rockies, 203; in Virginia City, Mon- 
tana, 214-216. 

Princeton: 85, 131. 

*' Proceedings of Sundry Citizens of Baltimore" : 349. 

Prosperity : a false condition of to-day, 395-401. 

Protestant, The : 53. 

Purcell, James : 263. 

Puritans: 42-3. 

Putnam, Rufus: 41. 

Qiiakers: 63; stem of pioneer stock, 76; find homes west 

of the AUeghanies, 77. 
Quicksilver: hard to pack in the mountains, 205. 

Bailroads: wooden-railed road from Chicago to Galena, 346 ; 
idea of Philip Evans Thomas, 348-9 ; routes suggested 
to the Pacific, 351-2 ; prophecy of what a road to the 



U2 GENEEAL INDEX 



Pacific would do, 353; to the Pacific delayed by Civil j 

War, 354; part played by them in the development of j 

the West, 362-367 ; changes wrought by them, 385 ; their I 

growth in America, 386 ; formerly owned largely out- 1 

side the U, S., 389; an overgrowth to-day, 391; will \ 

settle future of the West, 420. .j 

Bamsey: 134. | 

Beceipt-'boo\i of William Flack: 81. \ 

Red River carts : 345. | 

Beed: 333. | 

"i?e?ne?w6er the Alamo" : 182. | 

Bijle, The American : description, 11-18. I 

Bio Grande: 173. I 

Bobertson: rebellion of his men against AVashington, 59; \ 

formulates first written compact of civil government, \ 

130. > 

Bobertson, Charles : 128. A 

Bobertson, James : 53-4. | 

Bocky Mountain Fur Company: 197. | 

Boosevelt, Mr. : of New York, 187. 

Boundhead: 37. 

Boutes suggested to the Pacific: 351-2. 
Boutes to Montana : 211. 
Bush: 177. 

Bussia: emigration to the U. S., 410; England's answer 
to, 421. 

Sabine River: 173. 

St. Clair: defeat of, 114. 

St. Louis: became great by reason of her situation, 51 ; de- 
pot for fur trade, 70; a city of location, 364. 

St. Paul: emigration offices in, 418. 

St. Vrain, Colonel: 257. 

/S'aZem Presbvterian Church : 131. 

Sailing, John Peter: 98-9, 101. 

Salt: its importance in early days, 100. 

Sa7i Antonio: Texans at, 175; Crockett inside the ga^es of, 
177. 

San Francisco : 256. 

San Jacinto : 182. 

Santa Anna: marches on San Antonio, 174; his peons 
march toward the Alamo, 179. 

Santa Fe railway : 279-280. 

''Santa Fe Trail, Old" : 270. 

Santa Fe trail: not a transcontinental trail, 262; extent of, 
276 ; distances and directions of, 276-280 ; a fate fingei 
pointing to Mexico, 285. 

''/S'aw; Buck," The: 30. 



GENERAL INDEX 443 



/S'c^ooZ-building: first one in Tennessee, 131. 

Scotch-Irish : stem of pioneer stock, 76. 

S^ott, General: 114. 

Secession: position of the West in regard to, in early days, 
123-4. 

Settlement: advanced toward the Mississippi in the shape 
of a wedge, 45. 

Sevier, John: rebellion of his men against Washington, 
59; honored by Tennessee, 125; friend of Washington, 
128; a member of the North Carolina legislature, 
128-9; formulates first written compact of civil govern- 
ment, 130; part taken in annexation of Watauga to 
North Carolina, 131 ; presides at Jonesboro meeting, 
133 ; elected governor, 134 ; arrested on charge of trea- 
son, 138; elected to Congress, 138. 

Sevier and Robertson : riflemen of, 58. 

''Shakes," The: 157. 

Shawnee Indians capture Daniel Boone: 111. 

/S7<e/6y, Captain Evan : 128. 

Shenandoah — Kentucky stock: 73. 

Shiells, Dr. Hugh: 79. 

Shiells, Kitty : 79. 

Sierra Nevada mountains: 243-4. 

>S'/'>?(.r Indians, The: 195. 

Six Nations : 47. 

Skaggs, Henry: 101. 

S7net, Father de : 297. 

Smith, Henry: 174. 

Smith, James: 101. 

Smith, Jedediah: meets his fate on Sante F^ trail, 273; 
goes to the Pacific by land trail, 318-327. 

/S^mpes, Major William: 140. 

'' Snvffing the candle": 16. 

Socialism: captains of industry likely to cause the spread 
of, 398. 

''Society of Friends": records of, 77. 

South, The : mother of the West, 40 ; opens Western terri- 
tory, 189; is to-day American, 356; little understood, 
366. 

"Sonth Seas, The": 129. 

/S'o?<iAern Pacific Railway, The: 365. 

Southern n^emen : their skill, 14. 

Spain: league with the Cherokees, 59; claims portion of 
Georgia, 140; claims Sabine as a boundary, 173. 

Spaniards: result of letting their horses struggle over the 
plain, 27 ; interfere with Jedediah Smith, 321. 

Spencer, Judge : 138. 

Stage lines : 207. 



444 GENERai. index 



Stage trip: description of, 213. 

iS'^ar of empire : 38. 

Steam, era of: causes great change in America, 362. 

Steamboat: first one built on the Ohio River, 187; run 

regularly on western rivers, 201. 
Steiner, Michael : 99, 108. 
Steioart, John: 103; killed by Indians, 104. 
Stewart, William: 78. 
Stone, Uriah: 101. 
Stoner, Michael : 99, 108. 
Streams: their appeal to explorers, 292. 
Strode, Martha: 80. 
Stuart, John : 103. 
Stuart, Robert: 294. 
Sturges, Jonathan : 369, 370. 
Sublette, William : 295. 
Sugar: price of in running camps, 203. 
Sumpter mule: 202. 
Supplies: how received by outlying posts, 198; taken to 

Montana mining camps^ 211. 
Sweden: emigration to the United States, 408. 
Sylvania: 69. 

Taylor, Colonel : foot-note, 83. 

Tennessee: saved to the Union, 58; by whom peopled, 88; 
part included in Free State of Franklin, 125; honors 
John Sevier, 125; early form of government, 130; first 
literary institution in, 131. 

Tennent: 85. 

Texans: harass western commerce, 273. 

Texas: size, 172; population, 174; declared independent, 
174 ; situation in after declaration of independence, 177. 

Thermopylce: ]49. 

Thimbleng: 176, 181. 

Thomas, Philip Evans : 347-349. 

Thome, captain of the Tonquin: 330-331. 

Timber lands : being abandoned, 375. 

Tonquin: ship of Astor, 330-331. 

Trade, caravan : its extent, 281 ; goods carried, 282 ; car- 
ried on by southern-western men, 282. 

Trail: the Iroquois, 47 ; the Santa Fe, 260 ; the Oregon, 287. 

Tramell, Colonel : 230. 

Transportation: in its infancy, 64; difficulty of, leads to 
attempts of secession, 124; its importance in early 
days, 191 ; means employed in early times, 328. 

Transylvania University : 79. 

Travel: difficulties of in the West, 212. 

Tmvis: 177. 



GENERAL INDEX 445 



Tmvois, Thet 196. 

Tucker, Benjamin : 41. 

Two Medicine : The valley of, 341. 

Ulster, Ireland : 84. 
r/sfer Scots : 83-86. 
Union Pacific Railroad: 209, 365. 

Van Bur en: 183. 

Verendrye, Sieur de la: explores the West in 1742, 265; 

one of the first to tread the Oregon trail, 294. 
Victoria Cross: 115. 
Villard, Henry: 368. 

Virginia City, Montana: market reports, 214. 
Virginia: noted as a breeding ground for horses, 26; men 

from built Harrodsburg and Boonesborough, 42 ; part 

included in Free State of Franklin, 125. 
Virginia, AVest : part included in Free State of Franklin, 125. 
Von Humboldt, BsLTon: 287. 

Wagon train : description of, 209. 

Walker, J. R. : goes to the Pacific, 315-318. 

Walker, Doctor Thomas : 98, 101. 

Wallace, John : 80. 

Wallace, Rev. J. W. : 80. 

Washington, George : canal, 67 ; birth, 94 ; defeated at Great 
Meadows, 96 : on the Ohio River, 101 ; friend of Sevier, 
128, 140. 

Washington: authorities at, unable to be firm with France, 
Spain and England, 59. 

Washington CoUege : 132. 

Washington District: men of offer their services in the 
Revolution, 128; becomes part of North Carolina, 131 ; 
given to the United States, 132; takes steps to establish 
a government, 133. 

Washington, government at: Wilkinson stirs up dissatisfac- 
tion against, 141. 

Watauga: 130; annexed to North Carolina, 131. 

Watauga Articles of Association : 130. 

Water trail: from Green Bay to the Mississippi, 70. 

''Wautaf': 20. 

Webster, Daniel : 64, 300. 

Welsh: 76. 

West, The: indebted to southern states for its inhabitants, 
184; either old or new, 302; a prediction of its devel- 
opment, 375-377 ; little difference between it and the 
East, 379. 

West-bound ladin: The American, 51. 



U(j GENERAL INDEX 



Western man, The: his reliance and development, 67. 

Westward movement : starting point, 13 ; compared to flock 
of wild pigeons, 143 ; one of angles, 144. 

Wharton, Samuel : foot-note, 83. 

Whartons, The: 177. 

Wheat: cost of moving a ton in 1800, 389.^ 

White, James : opinion on future of Louisiana after its pur- 
chase, 62. 

^Vhite people: portion of country inhabited by them in 
1800, 45. 

''Whoa-haw": 299. 

" IVidoio and orphan makers" : rifle so called, 14. 

Wilkinson, General James : plans to hand over the West 
to Spain, 59-60, 124; continues his intrigues, 139. 

Williams, Bill : guide for Fremont, 258. 

Williams, Ezekiel, 294. 

Wills of Bucks countians : 80. 

Women: two go West along Oregon trail, 297. 

Wyeth, Nathaniel J. : 289. 

Yazoo: 140. 

Yellowstone National Park : 335. 

Young, Ewing: 230. 



OCT 23 1S03 




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